


Erik Gets a COVID Test

by paperandsong



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, COVID-19, COVID19, Depression, Emotional, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical, Modern AU, Opera references, Pharoga - Freeform, Pharoga break-up, Plague, Quarantine, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Weirdness, Zoom - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26581108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperandsong/pseuds/paperandsong
Summary: Sending lots of love to healthcare workers everywhere.
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Erik | Phantom of the Opera/The Persian
Comments: 205
Kudos: 119





	1. Summer: Erik Gets a COVID Test

She had many thoughts as she donned her plastic gown and apron, shoe covers and gloves, face mask and shield. When this first began in March, the PPE actually provided some warmth against the early spring chill. But by midsummer, PPE had transformed into every nurse’s personal bubble of hell. Personal Protective E - what starts with E, she pondered? Not inferno, that starts with I. Isn’t _Enfer_ French for Hell? Personal Protective _Enfer_ (PPE). God, it is so hot. Why couldn’t she be one of the lucky ones to do testing at the air conditioned walk-in clinics? How did she end up working in the drive-thru testing center in a stadium parking lot? She had gone through great lengths to earn her nursing degree so as to never work a drive-thru again!   
She sighed deeply. It was almost time to open the gates and let the patients drive in. Sick patients, asymptomatic patients, considerate patients, irate and maskless patients. Patients anxiously pouring hand sanitizer all over their steering wheels.  
A sleek black car pulled in under the tent. The windows were so deeply tinted that she could not make out the faces of the driver or passenger. Because she did not know it mattered, she allowed her fellow nurse to approach the driver while she walked around to the passenger side, clipboard and swab kit in hand. She waited with serene patience for the window to roll down. She could hear the driver already speaking amiably with her colleague on the other side. She lightly tapped on the glass.   
Finally, the window revealed a face. She took a step back, relieved that her mask covered her mouth as it twisted into a question. The man wore two masks: a black cloth mask over his mouth and nose, and beneath that, a black leather mask that covered his forehead and the skin around his eyes. His eyes themselves were black and deep set, giving an effect of no eyes at all amid the black interior of the car. Until they jerked upwards in their sockets to meet her stare.   
“Are you here to be tested, Sir?” she asked. He nodded.   
She nervously pulled out her pen, grateful that the screening questionnaire would cure her loss for words.   
“Can I have your name?” she asked, ready to complete his paperwork.  
“Erik.”   
His voice was the texture of velour against her ear. It was as mysterious as his face, but even more alluring.  
“And your last name?”   
He sighed.   
“I will need your address too. ”  
“No name and no country.”  
She was too professional to roll her eyes.  
“Ok, well, I at least need your zip code to report to the Department of Health.”  
The driver leaned across the man’s lap to speak to her.  
“You can copy all of my information for his forms. Address, telephone, everything.”  
“Does he live with you, Sir?”  
“God no! But it might be easier than trying to pry any more personal information out of him.”  
“I guess we can do that. I’ll copy it later. I do have a set of screening questions though.”   
Sweat rolled from her neck down her back, trapped inside her scrubs by the hellish layer of plastic. She was shaking so hard she dropped her pen to the asphalt. What was it about this man? Certainly he wasn’t the first difficult patient she had encountered at the testing site. Not even the first to refuse to tell her his name! But he was the first to present with multiple face masks. The first patient to have a voice that struck her right through the heart.   
“Do you have a cough?”  
“Yes.”  
“Body aches?”  
“Always.”  
She reached into her apron and took out her thermometer gun. He flinched as she held it to his forehead.  
“I’m just checking your temperature,” she said soothingly. She looked down at the reading. 93 Fahrenheit. That can’t be right. She held it up again.  
“Is there a problem?” he asked.  
“It’s telling me you have hypothermia,” she laughed nervously. “It must be broken, I’ll get another in a minute. Have you traveled or been in a large group of people in the last fourteen days?”  
“Absolutely not.”  
“Have you been around anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19?”  
He looked over at the driver. She also threw an envious glance that way. That man was fine. That man had a head full of thick dark hair and green eyes that sparkled over his mask. His normal COVID mask, not this strange ensemble that her patient wore. That man was laughing with her colleague as she demonstrated to him how she was about to insert the nasopharyngeal swab up his handsome nose.   
“You think your friend may have been exposed to COVID?” she asked.  
“He isn’t my friend.”  
“Erik! Stop giving her a hard time and just answer her questions,” the man scolded.  
“Yes, I think this man may have exposed me to imminent danger through his risky lifestyle choices.”  
“By which he means, _leaving the house to go to my job_ ,” the man laughed. “I have been told to get tested by my employer. And as I have spent time with my _acquaintance_ here, I thought he should be tested too.”   
“I never invited you to my house. I didn’t want you there!” he said bitterly. She pondered their relationship. Were they boyfriends? Friends? Exes?  
She took out the swab kit. Before unwrapping it, she explained that it would have to go up both nostrils and that it might make his eyes water.   
“You can take your mask off now,” she said gently.  
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He looked over to observe his companion in perfect compliance, tilting his head back while the nurse guided the long stick into his nasal entrance.  
“See?” she said. “It won’t be so bad.”  
She unscrewed the test tube and withdrew the cotton-tipped plastic wand glued to the lid. He recoiled. Though she could make out no expression on his face, his hands nervously clutched the car armrests with dread.  
“It will be a little uncomfortable, but I won’t hurt you. I promise.” She smiled sweetly with her eyes from behind her face shield. “Please, lower your mask.”   
Fingers full of apprehension, he pulled the fabric down to reveal his malformed mouth. To her frustration, his nose remained hidden under the second mask.  
“Sir, I need to be able to access your nostrils. Could you - could you take it all off?”  
“So that you can feast your eyes on my handsomeness?” he asked, with no hint of humor.  
“Erik, just do as the young lady says,” the other man hissed, rubbing his sinuses.  
It was excruciating to watch. His long fingers spider-walked over his face and reluctantly pulled at the leather. His eyes filled with shame as he lowered the mask into his hands. He could scarcely look at her now. His nose looked as though it had been eaten away by insects. His sallow skin was pulled taut across his gaunt cheeks. Her stomach turned in painful empathy. This poor man! But she did not flinch; she was a nurse. She had seen her share of faces.   
“Have your eyes had their fill?” he asked wryly. His honeyed voice had turned to vinegar.  
It did not merit a response. If she were staring, it was only so that she might prepare to take the sample in the gentlest manner possible. Lacking the structure of the dorsum nasi to guide the wand into his deeper cavity, her hand shook imperceptibly, yet uncontrollably. As the wand approached his face, he reflexively reached out and took hold of her wrist.   
If it had been anyone else she might have jerked away. She hated it when patients felt they had the right to touch her. But his cool grasp was intensely sensual; she could not pull away.   
“I’m sorry, my hand is shaking,” she whispered. “I think I need to hold onto your face - like this - to steady it…”   
She cupped his jaw with her left hand. He did not let go of her other wrist as she delicately placed the cotton tip into one of his holes. Was that his thumb on her pulse? Was he pressing it harder as she worked? It was cold, even through her glove. Maybe the thermometer wasn’t broken after all. She felt him quiver beneath her as she pushed the swab deeper. He gasped as she made small circles, gathering the needed mucus for the sample. Just as she had warned, his eyes watered. Then, just as delicately, she withdrew.   
“See?” she asked, breathlessly. “It wasn’t so bad. Now the other side.”  
His glassy black eyes pierced her directly and silently. Despite the layers of face shield, mask, and PPE, she felt that he could see right through her; past the plastic gown and scrubs and flesh and muscle. Down to her bones.   
She avoided his gaze as she moved her left hand under his chin, tilting his face higher, and lightly touched the other hole with the wet swab. She did not realize that as she thrust it deeper she also closed her palm tightly around his face. She could not know that no one had ever touched him in this way. He trembled in pleasure and fear. Something overcame him and he violently jerked his head to the side. The wand snapped in two.  
“Oh my God!” she gasped. “Are you alright? Did I hurt you?”  
As if in a daze, he let go of her wrist.  
“Here, please be still, I need to remove the other half…” She pinched at the broken wand still lodged in his nose. A coat of mucus was now running down the little plastic stick. It slipped through her fingers. Again and again she tried, but it was stubborn. “I am so sorry, Sir. I - I’m having a little trouble. Do you think you could pull it out yourself? In the mirror?”  
“No! You do it!” he growled at her indignantly. “Get it out of me!”  
She took a deep breath and plunged her thumb and index finger into the fleshy hole. He groaned. But whether it was in pleasure or pain she could not be certain. She apologized with every movement, but the sharp breaths through clenched teeth and the squirming roll of his hips in his seat made her question if they were even living the same experience.   
The other two finally took notice.  
“What is going on?” her colleague asked.  
“The swab! It’s stuck in his nose,” she shrieked.   
The other nurse ran to her with a pair of metal tweezers. But when they came into view, he put his arms up in defense.   
“Get away from me with those!”   
“Please, Sir, please let me -”  
“Just use your fingers! Do not touch me with those.”  
“Erik,” the other man said calmly. “Do you want me to do it?”  
“Go to hell! I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you breaking into my house!”   
“Sir - Erik, I am so sorry. Look, no tweezers. I’m just going to use my fingers again like this -” Again she pinched at the broken wand. But this time her fingers moved about his skin as if she were unfolding the petals of a flower. He closed his eyes and his breathing slowed as a great calm came over him. And then he began to sob.   
A heart-wrenching sob! She had never heard such. He heaved and began to sniffle - “No, don’t do that! Don’t breath in - then I’ll never find it!” Snot began to pour out of both holes. He trembled with more than discomfort. Was it panic at the foreign object in his body? Or was it the sensation of her gloved fingers touching him in such sensitive places, with such care, care that could even be perceived as affection? She would never know. But she too trembled and it was certainly more than fear of losing the sample to the dark hole of his nose. His vulnerability touched something in her. Who knew that pity could be so voluptuous?   
“Yes, that’s good. Keep crying, Erik, it’s helping. Don’t sniff! Just let it out, let it all come out. I am so sorry, please forgive me, here is a tissue, keep crying - there!”  
The broken piece of swab was caught up in the tissue as he wiped the mucus and tears away. He continued to weep as he offered it to her. She took it delicately into her fingers and dropped it into the test tube. She screwed the lid on tight. She smiled with her eyes, hoping he wasn’t about to unleash a string of insults against her.   
“I am so sorry...” She was lost in his stare. She felt suddenly that she knew him. That she had always known him.  
He smeared the last of his tears away with his long fingers.   
“Will you call with the results?” he asked quietly, looking down into his lap.  
“Someone will call you if the result is positive.”  
“You won’t call?”  
“No, someone from the Department of Health would call. Not me. And only if the result is positive. It’s good news if you don’t hear from anyone.”  
“You won’t call me, then?” He lifted his eyes to meet hers.  
Oh. He felt it too.   
“Are we all done?” the other man asked. “You’ll call my number if either of us is positive?”  
Speechless, she nodded.  
“Thanks! I hope your next patients don’t give you nearly so much trouble,” the man snorted as he began to drive away.   
Removing her gloves, she watched Erik watching her in the rearview mirror, until the window rolled up and he was out of sight. 


	2. Autumn: Erik Gets COVID

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A single reader subscribed to this story despite the one-shot tag. This is for you!
> 
> This is the first fic I've written for which I didn't have an ending in mind from the start. I'm not sure how this will end but there will be at least one more chapter. It kind of depends on how the COVID situation progresses in the real world. 
> 
> I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Wear you masks!

She fingered a little slip of paper in her pocket. For the last three months, she had put it there every morning before she left for work, just in case she felt braver than she had the day before. She stood in line, nervously looking at all the unmasked people crowding in around her.   
“How can I help you, angel?” asked the masked man from behind a thick panel of plexiglass.   
“Excuse me?” she asked, bracing herself against his gaze. And then she softened as she remembered that the handsewn mask she wore today had a pair of angel wings right over her mouth. She smiled with her eyes.  
“A chai latte, please.”  
She left the coffee shop as soon as she had her drink in hand. The tables were full of people chatting away with their mouths open wide as if there were nothing amiss with the world. She wished she had the audacity to shout that they put everyone at risk with their unmasked foolishness. Didn’t they know what was happening at the hospital? But she could never. She dug her ear buds into her ears and returned to her inner life of Verdi and meditations.  
It was a beautiful autumn morning. November 1. When she got home tonight she would light a candle for her father, take out his rosary, sit alone in her grief. She took a deep breath and pushed these thoughts from her mind. Not now, not now. The early sunlight illuminated red and gold leaves, setting them aflame. Her morning walk to the hospital would be her last moment to enjoy the fleeting autumnal colors before her shift began.   
Of course the weather would turn cool and beautiful the moment she got a new job working twelve hour shifts in the windowless emergency room. But, it was a promotion over the testing site. It was what she had always wanted.  
She slipped her fingers into her pocket and felt for the paper again. She couldn’t help herself. Maybe today would be the day she called the phone number written upon it. The number she had furtively stolen from a testing form so many months ago.  
There were a few obstacles that prevented her from making such a call. First, it would be highly unprofessional to copy a patient’s phone number from a medical form to make a personal call. Second, it wasn’t even his phone number and she would have to talk to his friend or acquaintance or whatever first. And third, the man was terrifying and she wasn’t really that sure she wanted to invite him into her life. Yet, in spite of all her good sense, she felt called to speak to him again. There was a lingering feeling that he was a piece of her that she had never known was missing. The feeling that she would be full of regret if she should never hear that voice again.   
When she arrived at work she changed into a clean set of blue scrubs. She removed her angel-cloth and donned her medical grade mask. She used a special clip to pin the elastic straps of the mask to the back of her hair, rather than sit on her ears. It was more comfortable this way. Then, she carefully adjusted her plastic face shield. She was handed a warning along with the clipboard for her first patient of the morning.  
“COVID patient. Watch out - this one thinks he’s too good to complete his paperwork. He wouldn’t give us a last name. He didn’t even bring his identification card! He only brought us a bad attitude. At least he wore a mask.”  
She didn’t think anything of it until she entered the consultation room. She was staring down at the incomplete intake form when she heard the voice.  
“Hello, Christine.”  
She was so startled by the intimacy with which he said her name that she dropped the clipboard. Papers scattered across the floor. For a moment she could only stare. He again wore two masks, both black. She noticed a small scorpion embroidered over the corner of his mouth.  
“It’s you,” she whispered, dropping onto her knees. “How - how did you know my name?”  
“I have always known your name,” he said, looking down at her on the floor, scrambling to gather up the papers. When she looked back up at him he could see in her eyes that his answer had caused her distress. “Because it was on your badge,” he explained.  
“Oh! Of course, of course.” She stood up, composing herself, fiddling with the badge that hung from her lanyard. “I never thought I would see you again. What a coincidence.” She faked a laugh. She tried so hard to be professional. “What brings you in today?”  
Now, standing before him, that feeling washed over her again. The feeling that she had always known him. That they would always meet again. He took a deep and labored breath.  
“My acquaintance tested positive last week. I tested positive two days ago.” He clutched at his chest with his hand. “This morning - I am finding it very difficult to breathe. As if each breath only brings in half the oxygen it should.”   
She noticed that his voice was more subdued; softer than their first encounter. Weaker.   
“I’m sorry to hear that. I hope your friend is ok.”  
“He’s not my friend.”  
“Right. It’s really good that you came in today - if you’re having difficulty breathing. I’m going to take your vitals and then a doctor will come in to see where we go from here.”  
She pulled the blood pressure monitor stand close to her. Slight tremors rippled through her fingers.  
“Can you take off your jacket?”  
He hesitated.  
“So that I can take your blood pressure?”  
“I would prefer to leave it on.”  
She tilted her head and squinted her eyes over her mask. He was such a strange man. So guarded.   
“You can keep your shirt on, I just need you to take off your jacket or it won’t be an accurate reading.”  
He nodded and reluctantly slid the black jacket from his willowy arms. He was very thin. Too thin. She could see by the way he hunched over in a self-embrace that he attempted to hide his body from her.   
She gently reached out and pulled his arm to her. He quivered beneath her touch. Even through the black fabric of his sleeve and the purple latex of her gloves she could feel the cold of his bones. She tugged the cuff up over his sharp elbow. His arm was almost too thin to keep it in place. She let go while the machine slowly closed in around him. He squirmed with discomfort.   
“It’s ok, Erik. It will only be tight for a few seconds.” He nodded and took a deep breath. She wished she could touch his hand or shoulder to comfort him. But she did not dare. Standing so close to him was making her lightheaded. She could not touch him more than necessary; the effect it had on him affected her in return.  
The machine released him. She hummed with concern.  
“Your blood pressure is very low. Do you ever feel faint?”  
“Very often.”  
“Erik, do you have any medical conditions that we should know about? You didn’t put anything on your form. It’s really important to tell us your medical history...”  
His eyes were glazed over. She could tell he wasn’t listening to anything she was saying.  
“Erik?”  
“I looked everywhere for you. I went back to the stadium, but they wouldn’t tell me anything about you.” He looked up into her eyes, from across his mask, across her mask. “I was so lost. I thought I might never find you.”  
She thought that she might pull the little slip of paper from her pocket, to show him how she had almost looked for him too. How she had only been afraid to call because she knew it would change everything. But before she could reach for it, he slumped forward into her arms.  
“Erik!” she struggled to hold him up, to keep him from sliding off the exam table and onto the floor. With a rush of strength she pushed him backwards so that he fell onto the padded table instead. He was out cold.   
  
No name, no country, no emergency contact. He had left everything blank except for ‘Erik’. There was no one to call when he was admitted into the intensive care unit. No family, no friends to alert. But she knew he had an acquaintance.  
Her hands shook as she dialed the number during her break. It was not professional. It was not her job. But she couldn’t bear the idea that he might be completely alone. That he might even die alone. She pressed her eyes shut at the thought of it.  
“Hello?”  
“Hi, this is Christine Daaé calling from Memorial Hospital. I - I’m calling about Erik.”  
“Erik?” the man said with surprise. “What’s he done now?”  
“He’s in the ICU.”  
“Oh, God,” the man sighed. “Wait, did he actually put my name down as a contact?”  
“Well, not exactly,” she admitted “Um, I’m the nurse that gave him a COVID test a few months ago. During the summer.”  
“Oh, it’s you!”  
That he knew exactly who she was gave her the confidence to keep talking.  
“It’s me. I - I have to confess something. I took your phone number from his test form - because he asked me to call him. I - I still had your number and I thought I should let you know. I know that’s really unprofessional. Please don’t be angry. He’s really sick and I didn’t know what else to do.”  
“I’ll be right there. Tell me where to go - just, tell me what to do and I’ll be there.”  
“COVID patients can’t have visitors. Even I can't visit him. I work in the ER, not the ICU. I just - I just wanted you to know. So that someone knows where he is.”  
The man was silent. Thinking.  
“Thank you, Christine. Thank you for calling me. What can I do?”  
“Does Erik have a phone? He didn’t have one on him when he came to the hospital.”  
“No.”  
“Why wouldn’t he have a phone?” she asked with genuine curiosity.  
“He never wanted one. He doesn’t really like being contacted. Especially not by me.”  
“Well, do you think you could get him one? I could make sure it gets to him. I think it will be important for him to have one while he’s here.”  
“I agree. Can I bring one to the hospital?”  
“Yes, meet me at five. I’ll have another break and I can meet you outside.”  
“Christine?”  
“Yes?”  
“Why are you so concerned about him? I mean, thank you. But you don’t even know him.”  
But this wasn’t true. She had always known him. 

She waited anxiously in the parking lot. She had begun to feel guilty for making the call. Erik had been adamant that they were not friends. She had no idea what fraught history lay between them. He might be furious with her for interfering in his life this way. She could have bought a phone herself. She could have been his person. He said he had looked for her. Her heart tightened at the thought of it.   
There he was - that green eyed man. Even over his mask they sparkled.   
“Hello,” he said, recognizing her right away. He was older than she had remembered. He pulled a shiny new phone from his coat pocket. “I’ve already programmed my number. Though I doubt he will ever call me, it’s there if anyone else needs to call me.”  
“Thank you,” she said with a sigh of relief.  
“No, thank you, Christine. I want to be able to help him any way I can. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”  
“Can I ask? What is your connection to him? He calls you his acquaintance, not his friend. And yet you clearly care about him.”  
He huffed and looked away, digging his hands deep into his pockets.   
“It’s...complicated. Would it be enough to say that we are entangled, and leave it at that?”  
Entangled. She knew he could mean business entanglements, even family entanglements. But all she could think of were an entanglement of limbs, a tangle of sheets. There was a story here. And neither wanted to tell her about it. She held the phone up.  
“Will he know how to use it?”  
“The phone? Of course. He is good with technology. He just doesn’t like communications.”  
“I’ll be sure he gets it tonight.”  
“Christine?”  
“Yes.”  
“You’ve seen his face.”  
She felt a chill prickle the backs of her arms.  
“Yes, of course. I gave him a nasopharyngeal swab. I’ve seen all of it.”  
“He’s had a hard life.”  
“I can imagine.”  
“He is fragile.”  
“What do you mean?” She thought that maybe he would provide some information about Erik’s missing medical history. But instead he said,  
“He can be a real dick.”   
She was quiet. Her eyebrows furrowed over her mask. He continued,   
“I’m usually protective over him. But in this case, it’s you I don’t want to see hurt. You seem like a good person. Be careful.”  
She wanted out of the conversation as fast as possible.  
“Thanks again. Bye.”  
“He likes music.”  
“What?”  
“He likes music. Especially opera. He’s a big fan of Gounod. He might be nicer to deal with if he gets to listen to music. I’ve downloaded some songs onto the phone already. But it might be good for you to know.”  
“ _I remember_ ,” she whispered.   
“Goodbye, Christine.”

When her evening shift ended, she made a call to the ICU, five floors above her. She knew a few of the nurses and was hoping at least one would be willing to help her.  
“Hey, Giry, have you seen a new COVID patient on your floor yet? His name is Erik, he was just admitted this morning.”  
“You mean the one with the mask? Not the COVID mask, but the whole-face mask?”  
“Yes, that’s him.”  
“You mean the one who has been asking for you all day? Telling us we need to put you on his floor? As if we should make you his personal nurse?”  
“Oh no,” she gasped.  
“Oh yes,” the older woman assured her. “Is that your Erik?”  
“I - I can help...”  
“You aren’t allowed in the ICU.”  
“I know, I know. Look, I’ve gotten him a phone. If you could just help me give it to him - if I could just talk to him, I think he would calm down. Could you do that for me?”  
“I’m willing to try anything. He’s only been here a day and has already exhausted everyone. He is very emotional, you know? He cried when we told him to take off his mask to give him oxygen.”

When they met at the elevators, Nurse Giry’s tone had changed.  
“He’s not well, Christine. He must have all kinds of underlying conditions. But he wouldn’t give us any medical history. We have no idea who he is or what else is wrong with him.”  
“I know. I don’t know anything either.”  
“I’ll look out for him for you. He can be very charming - despite the bad attitude. But I am worried about him. The nasal issues probably made him vulnerable to infection.”  
“Thank you, Giry,” Christine whispered. If not for the virus she would have hugged the woman. Christine handed her the phone along with a handwritten note,

_Dear Erik,_

_I’m sorry I cannot visit you in person. I called your “acquaintance” and he has brought you this phone. Forgive me if that was the wrong thing to do. He’s entered his number and I’ve entered mine. Please call either of us if you need anything. Or if you just want to talk. Please call me. I get off work at nine._

_Your friend,_  
_Christine_

By the time the clock struck nine, there were twenty text messages and an inbox full of voicemails. She hadn’t listened to a voicemail since her father last left her one. She put in her ear buds and listened to each message on her dark walk home from work. She savored every word, every silken plea for her to call him back, every velvet appeal. His voice was tired but no less alluring.   
She was tired herself. Twelve hour shifts always drained her. She took a shower. She put on the kettle. She lit a candle for her father. But she did not have time to pray the rosary. She broke into a cold sweat as her fingers typed out a quick message,

**I’m home now.**  
**Are you still awake?**  
**Call me if you’re awake.**

Within seconds her phone was ringing. She hesitated to answer. This would be their first conversation free of any pretense of a medical consultation. What would they talk about? Why couldn’t they have just kept texting? Isn’t that what normal people do?   
“Hello, Christine.”  
That voice! Velvety, though nasally for all the tubes inserted deep in his cavities. Texting would never be enough. She could never get enough.  
“Are you very tired, Erik?”  
“Dead tired. But it is so much better, hearing your voice.”  
“I don’t want to keep you up late. I’ve been worried about you all day. I just wanted to be sure that you’re alright.”  
“Oh, please don’t go yet! Please talk to me!”  
“Of course,” she said, nestling herself into bed. “Let’s talk. I - I hope you don’t mind that I called your - that I called him. He’s the one that brought you a phone. He seemed really concerned about you. I hope I didn’t offend you by calling him.”  
“It’s alright, Christine. I’m very grateful for the phone.”  
“Erik, what is your relationship to him? He really seems to care about you. Yet you won’t even call him by his name.”  
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said coldly. She knew it was a final statement.  
“Alright. We don’t really even know each other. Who are you? Where are you from?”  
“No. None of that matters.”  
“What do you do for work?”  
“My work isn’t of interest. It is nothing that defines me. Christine, we don’t have time to talk about the things that do not matter.”  
His intensity pulled her in when it should have pushed her away.  
“What do you want to talk about then?” she asked.  
“I want to know that you feel it too.”  
Her cheeks grew warm.  
“I feel it too,” she confessed.  
“I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. Even though we’ve only just now found each other.”  
“Even though you’ve never even seen my face.”  
“Even though you’ve seen all of mine. You didn’t shrink back in fear. It’s almost as though you had already seen it. As if you had already -” his voice faltered “- already suffered it.”  
“How could I have known though? What are you trying to say?”  
“I think our story has been written before. Written and rewritten. Over and over.”  
“And in these stories, were we friends...” her voice trailed off as she hesitated to finish her thought. “Were we... something else?”  
“It depends on the story.”  
“And these stories, were they tragedies or were they fairy tales with happy endings?”  
“It doesn’t matter how the other stories ended. It only matters what happens in this timeline.”  
The little golden hairs on her arms stood on end. She could feel his presence in her room, though she knew well he was tied to a hospital bed by tubes and monitors.   
“Ours is an eternal love. I would make you my queen, Christine. Persephone to my Hades.”  
“Persephone and Hades? Wouldn’t it be more romantic to say Romeo and Juliet?” she huffed.  
“Romeo and Juliet die.”  
“But Hades kidnaps Persephone!”  
“And yet they reign over the underworld side by side still. Eternal love, Christine.”  
Her blood ran cold.  
“Why would you compare yourself to Hades, Erik?”  
“You have seen my face!”  
“It’s not so -”  
“No! Don’t try to deny it. You would deny me everything. I am Death, Christine. I am nothing but a corpse. But a corpse that loves you. And I believe that you already love me too. You are not someone who is afraid of Death.”  
“I don’t want to die!”  
“Of course not! I don’t want to die either. I want to live. I want to live next to you, and when our love is over, to die next to you. I would make you my queen. You are not afraid of Death. Do not be afraid of me either.”  
His words spun her mind in different directions. She wasn’t so sure she understood anything that he said. It was beyond understanding. She was overwhelmed.  
“You must be tired, Erik.”  
“I am. But I -”  
“I think you should sleep. I will try to call you in the morning, before my shift.”  
“No, not yet. We don’t have much time.”  
“I’ll talk to you in the morning. I am so happy I found you again. I just want you to get better now. You must let your body rest.”  
“Christine, let me explain it to you -”  
“Goodnight, Erik. Sleep well.”  
She hung up before he could respond. He did not call back. But she kept the phone on her pillow through the night, just in case he did.

She received one text message overnight. But it wasn’t from Erik. It was from Nurse Giry.   
It read,

**We had to intubate your friend.**  
**Just thought you would want to know.**


	3. Autumn: Erik in the ICU

**: How is he doing?**   
**C: The nurses say he is stable.**   
**: Have they been playing music for him?**   
**C: Every day. Apparently he doesn’t like Meyerbeer.**   
**: ?!**   
**C: Youtube autoselected Die Hugenotten. They said he almost exploded.**   
**: LOL. They’re lucky he was sedated.**   
**C: ?!**   
**: Christine, I have to confess, I feel so guilty. I know he got it from me.**   
**C: You can’t know that.**   
**: But I do. I’m the only person he saw for weeks.**   
**C: Why didn’t you leave him alone then, if that’s what he wanted?**   
**: I went in to check on him because I was worried about him. He’d locked himself up composing, not eating anything. He could only have gotten it from me. And I never even got sick. I feel so bad.**   
**C: You can’t feel guilty about it. You were trying to help him. You were being a good friend. But you probably could have worn a mask.**   
**: I’m not his friend.**   
**C: That’s what you both keep saying.**   
**: Thank you for looking out for him.**   
**C: We’re both looking out for him. I have to go. I have to get up early for work. Sleep well, friend.**   
**: Sleep well, Christine.**

“Sir, will you kindly stop breathing down my neck?” Nurse Giry turned to scowl at the man behind her in line. “And pull up your mask!”  
The man opened his mouth as if to argue, but he thought better of it. He readjusted his mask over his face and took a few steps back. Christine gave her a knowing smile with her eyes. Giry was tough. She was the kind of person you would want on your side. Christine rarely saw anyone outside of work and was grateful when Giry had invited her to meet. The isolation was getting to her.  
They ordered their hot drinks and took them to a nearby park where they could talk. They sat a respectful distance apart so they could take off their masks. Giry spoke in a rough and solemn tone.  
“He’s not doing well, Christine. He’s been on the ventilator a week now, but he isn’t getting better.”   
Christine nodded and warmed her hands on her drink. She knew it wasn’t hopeful. She braced herself for the inevitable. She only wished she could speak to him just once more. She felt guilty herself for having ended their conversation so abruptly. He clearly had more to say to her.  
“It’s hard to know who it will take and who it will spare. You know my daughter, Meg? One of the girls in her dance company just died. Cecile. She was only twenty-one years old! Athletic, beautiful dancer. A little underweight. She died within just two weeks. And yet other people are able to overcome it, against all odds.”  
Tears pooled in the corners of Christine’s eyes.   
“Christine, I have a wild idea. It will probably get us both fired. Or maybe not - we’re so understaffed right now." She took a deep breath. “I want to help you visit him. I think it could help him, just to have you near. Just for a few hours.”  
Christine broke into a sob, her heaving breaths like fog in the cold morning air. She couldn't even manage to say 'thank you'.  
“Stop that now! Calm down. We need to work out the details. Are you up for it?”  
She nodded her head fiercely, trying to compose herself. But relief and gratitude poured out of her, soaking her mask with tears and snot. Giry scrunched up her nose just a little at the sight of it.

Giry determined that the hours between two and four a.m. would be the safest to avoid detection. She met Christine at the elevators and pulled her into a closet. She zipped her into hooded coveralls and helped her step into plastic booties. She tied the blue apron around her waist and adjusted the N95 to be sure it was sealing properly around her mouth. Then she pulled the face shield down over her face like a helmet.  
“Don’t do anything stupid, Christine.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“No taking off your mask - for any reason, ok? The last thing we need is another nurse with COVID. We need you healthy.”  
Christine pressed a small box of English chocolates into the kind woman’s hand.   
“Thank you,” Christine whispered.  
“My favorites,” Giry sighed and pressed them to her chest. “Hurry up now, so we don’t get caught.”  
She stuck her head out into the darkened hallway to be sure no one was coming. Then she motioned for Christine to follow her to room five, where he lay in peaceful, sedated repose. Christine saw that Giry had set up a low stool next to the bed for her. It was set in the darkened corner of the room closest to the observation window, so that she could hide herself beneath it while sitting at his side.   
She paused a moment, to take in the sight of him. His long frame took up the entire length of the hospital bed, and yet he seemed to take up no space at all. He was disappearing before her very eyes. Slipping away even as the ventilator did its best to fill him with air. She stepped closer. It hurt her to see him like this. The endotracheal tube kept his mouth propped open, his thin lips stretched across the top of his teeth in a grim smile. They had put extra tape around the nasogastric tube to keep it in place, compensating for his lack of structure. His chest slowly rose and fell, the sheet and hospital gown forming billowing pockets of air over his sternum. She looked over at his vitals flickering on the screen. His oxygen was very low.  
She looked down at his hand. She wanted so much to reach out and hold it. But she didn’t want to disturb the IV catheter. She knew she shouldn’t touch him at all. She remembered Giry’s warning and kept her hands to herself. She sat down on the little stool.   
She felt for her father’s rosary in the pocket of her scrubs, under her coveralls and apron, where she couldn’t reach it. It was a comfort just to have it there. Her mind began to reel with all the things she would say to him, if only he could hear her. And then she reminded herself that it was good for patients to be spoken to, even when sedated. He could hear her voice, even if he couldn’t understand her words. Even if he never remembered what she said. As long as she kept her voice calm and soothing, it could help. She just had to force herself to speak out loud, over the cricket-chirping of the machines, the humming silence of the still room, and her own feelings of awkwardness. 

_I am so sorry to see you like this,_ she whispered. No, no, keep it positive, she corrected herself. _You look good - you look strong. I am so grateful to Nurse Giry. She helped me come here. I’m not really supposed to be here at all, but she helped me sneak in. She said I can stay for two hours and then I have to go._  
 _I - I feel so close to you and yet I still don’t know anything about you. I wish I could hear your voice again. But maybe I could tell you a little about myself. Your friend told me you're a composer. I’ve been a nurse for about five years, but I originally studied music. My father was a violinist. About two years into my program he got very sick. I dropped out to take care of him, and then I took a few months off after he died just to - to try to get over it. But I never really got over it. I would sing for you now, except that it makes me too sad. And also, I need to be really quiet because I’m not even supposed to be in here._  
 _When I went back to school I went into nursing. I had to start over - none of my credits transferred. But I felt called to it. The nurses who took care of my father were such angels, I wanted to help someone like that one day too._  
She paused and readjusted herself on the stool. It was hard to speak of her father.  
_You said you think I’m someone who is not afraid of death. I think you’re right. Since my father died, I have had perhaps an unhealthy interest in death and images of death. I had my father cremated because I couldn’t bear the idea of pumping him with embalming fluid, but neither could I imagine him rotting away. Better to send him off to his final form more quickly, I thought. Maybe it's just quarantine making me crazy, but sometimes I find myself fixated on the idea that I’ll only be close to him again when I am dead too -_  
She choked. Tears were streaming down her mask, fogging up the face shield. She should stop. She should speak of lighter things. She should sound happy and encourage him to feel better. She looked at his face again. But he didn’t want that from her, did he? That kind of dishonesty? He was probably dying; why should he be afraid of hearing her speak about it?  
She saw that his phone lay next to him, just under the pillow. It was such a private thing, one’s phone. But was it really an invasion if the other person was the other side of your own soul? Besides, only two people in the world had his number and she was one of them. She picked it up. She saw that he had only ever texted her. And he had only ever received the one text from her. And many, many from his friend.   
She scrolled through the music that had been downloaded: Gounod, Verdi, Mozart, Puccini. Oh no, had he? He had put both La Traviata and La Bohème in rotation. What was he thinking? Maybe he didn’t know anything about opera. Or maybe he knew Erik better than she ever would.   
_Giry told me you’ve been enjoying the music. Your friend downloaded these and I really have to object to some of his choices. I don’t want you getting any ideas. This hospital bed isn’t your final act, ok? I don’t want a Violetta or a Mimì. Tuberculosis wasn’t romantic and neither is COVID._  
She gave a weak laugh, but found herself unable to keep speaking. She looked behind her at the window. No one was watching. No one would bother her. She would keep her glove on. She slid her hand under his and held it gently. She thumbed over the visible blue veins and tendons and bones. He hardly seemed real.   
_I think a lot about what you said, the last time we spoke. I wonder what we were before. I wonder how much you remember. Sometimes I think I remember. But I have to remind myself that I really do not know you at all. I hope there is time to get to know you._  
 _I think - I’m sorry to say this, Erik - but I think there were times when I was afraid of you. Times when we hurt each other. Something about your voice, when you’re agitated, it stirs up certain feelings in me. Feelings of dread. And then other times, your voice invokes in me the sweetest longing for things I never even knew I missed until now...There were times when you gave me happiness, ecstasy even. But I think you also had a terrible temper. I think memories of it echo in me still. And I have to remind myself what you said - that it only matters what we do in this timeline, in this life. Can we promise each other that we won’t hurt each other any more? I can make that promise - I will never, never hurt you. Can you do the same for me?_  
She was startled by the sudden grip around her fingers. Could he hear her? Could he even understand? Tears began to overflow again and stream down underneath her mask. She was itching to take it off.  
If she could just kiss his forehead. Just brush her masked mouth against his cool, ashen skin. Just so that he could know that she felt it too. She looked behind her at the window. The hall was dark; there was no one there. She quickly removed her face shield and stood up over him. The mask crinkled as she pressed her lips to his hairline.   
_I don’t want us to be Hades & Persephone or Romeo & Juliet. I just want us to be Erik & Christine. I want us to have enough time to understand what that means. To make it mean whatever we choose for ourselves. Please don’t give up on this life yet. _  
She sat down and took up his hand again. She was so sleepy. There was a small space on the bed near his elbow. Just enough to lay her head. She closed her eyes and fell asleep next to his arm. It was extremely uncomfortable, yet she could have slept like that forever. But it would not last long. Giry soon poked her head in and scolded her soundly,  
“Wake up, Christine! It’s time to go. I told you not to do anything so stupid.”


	4. Winter: Erik Wakes Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is doing well out there. While there is a lot of hope in the new vaccines, the virus also continues to surge. Keep wearing your masks, stay at home as much as you can, and take care of each other.

Christine wasn’t allowed to visit the ICU again. Giry upbraided her fiercely for not only removing her face shield, but laying her head upon the bed of a highly-contagious patient.   
“You should have known better!”  
Christine agreed. She should have. But she wasn’t sorry; he was getting better. Gradually, his oxygen intake climbed upwards. His nurses and doctors began to think that maybe he wasn’t a lost cause after all. They slowly began making plans to bring him out of sedation.  
Christine, burdened with the guilty feeling that she had knowingly exposed herself, took ten days off to quarantine so that she wouldn't unknowingly infect anyone else. Of course, she did not tell her supervisors the details of her exposure. They were not happy; the ER was as understaffed as the ICU.  
The weather had turned cold, making it easy to hole up in her apartment. She ordered Indian take-out, she binged on Merchant Ivory films and free opera streams, she made cup after cup of spiced tea with milk. She did not get sick, but the isolation made her feel as though the world outside of her window were only paper thin. She turned inward, roaming about the neglected corners of her mind, catching snippets of her father’s voice, forgotten vignettes of her childhood. She had vivid dreams in which she and Erik held long conversations about their lives together. He grasped her hand so tightly that she could feel its release as she woke up in the mornings. She spoke to no one else.  
While Giry was still irritated with the younger woman, she did arrange for someone to hold Erik’s phone close to his ear for a few minutes each night so that he could hear her voice. This was not special treatment; all patients benefited from hearing the voices of their loved ones and the ICU staff tried their best to make this happen for everyone. Christine would tell him about her boring day, which films and operas she had seen, what she was making for dinner. And a few hours later, when she was herself settled into a deep sleep, they would come together to resolve the big questions of the day: How long ago had they known each other? Would they have met eventually even if the pandemic had never happened? What did the future look like for them?  
One thing she did not mention - awake or asleep - was that she texted his friend daily. The man was concerned and Christine felt obligated to inform him of what little she knew of Erik’s condition. Neither were listed as his emergency contact; Giry broke all kinds of privacy policies by telling Christine anything at all. He seemed equally concerned about Christine. He expressed doubt that she could understand what she had fallen into without revealing anything to her at all. 

**C: But what are you trying to say?**   
**: Just that he has a lot of secrets. I don’t even know them all.**   
**C: But if you aren’t going to tell me anything, why do you bring it up?**   
**: To warn you. He can be very manipulative**   
**C: I know my own mind, I can handle it**   
**: I just don’t want to see you get hurt**   
**C: What can I do to convince you that I care about him - of my own free will?**   
**: You’ve never even spoken to him for more than a few minutes at a time**   
**C: You really aren’t a good friend to him**   
**: You have no idea what I’ve done for him. No idea.**

She ended the conversation there. They didn’t understand each other. It seemed as if he were both jealous and disbelieving that she could love Erik. As if Erik were unlovable. Or, as if Erik were unlovable to anyone but him. He seemed to think Erik had bewitched her into caring for him. Because there was no other way to love him than through enchantment. 

Giry texted her the day he was brought out of sedation. He was improving. He would be off the ventilator soon. It would be a while longer before he could speak again, but he could send her simple text messages. Once or twice a day she would receive a cryptic, misspelled, somewhat childish declaration of love for her. She knew that anything more complex would fatigue him. When she spoke to him on the phone, she kept her language light and sweet. He could not respond with anything more than a breathy murmur. Her mind worked out all that she really wanted to say to him in her dreams.  
“No one would believe us, if we tried to tell them,” she whispered to him at night.   
“Why would we need to explain it to anyone else? I don’t want to talk to anyone else ever again. I don’t even want to look at another person now that I have found you.”  
“Don’t say that…”  
Even as they spoke she felt his cold grip on her hand weaken. No, not yet, she told herself, squeezing her eyes tight. Don’t wake up yet. A ringing phone invaded the dream and hastened Erik’s retreat from her bed. She opened her eyes in sorrow that it hadn’t been real. That she couldn’t make it last. She could still feel the chill of him near her. But he was already so far away. She sleepily grabbed the phone from her nightstand.  
“Hello?”  
“Christine,” he wheezed. She wept with relief. His voice!  
It croaked and cracked. He would need weeks of therapy to restore his instrument to its proper state. He could not even swallow properly. And yet still it felt like velvet across her ear.   
“You don’t have to speak, Erik. Rest your voice.”  
“I - I want...” He paused. She could hear that it was painful for him. “...to see you.”  
“But you can!” she said excitedly. “We can turn on the video. Hold on,” she sat up in her bed. There was no time to brush her hair or put on make-up. Really, the thought didn’t even cross her mind. She turned on her camera, eagerly hoping he would do the same.   
He gave a soft moan.   
“You are so beautiful…” He took a long breath. “Exactly... as I imagined you would be.”  
“Turn yours on too.”  
“No.”  
“But I want to see you.”  
“No. You have...already seen enough of me. Let me just be a voice.”  
She did not protest. She could imagine how vulnerable he might feel without his mask, with tubes taped to his face. But knowing that he could see her while she could not see him made her feel exposed in turn.   
They spoke every day. Not too long - his voice was slow to recover from the ventilator and he easily fatigued. Sometimes they did not speak at all. She would simply carry her phone around her apartment, propping it up as she cooked or folded laundry. All those quotidienne acts that she could not believe he would want to see. But he did. He liked to watch her, he said. He worshiped her. Everything about her. 

“Sing to me.”  
“No, Erik. I don’t sing anymore.”  
“Sing for me,” he hissed quietly into the phone.   
“I - I can’t. It makes me too sad.”  
“Sing for me,,,”  
“Do you like stories? I could tell you a story instead.”  
“I will allow it... just this once.”  
“Ok, let me think. There was this one my father used to tell me when I was little. I think you’ll like it. It goes, _Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing…_ ”

  
“Sing.”  
“But Erik, I told you -”  
“Sing for me, Christine.”  
“I haven’t in so long. I haven’t even warmed up my voice in ages.”  
“So...warm up. Let me hear your scales.”  
She sighed. He was still in the hospital. She still couldn’t see him in person. His unrecovered voice was so pitiful. It was the only thing he was asking of her.   
“What do you want to hear?”  
“When you were in school...did you study Faust?”

“Sing for me.”  
“Erik, I am so tired tonight. I started work again today and I just got home. Can we just talk?”  
“Sing for me... my angel.”  
She took a deep breath.   
“ _Il était un roi de Thulé qui..._ ”  
“Are you laying down?” he interrupted.  
“What?”  
“You sound... like you are laying down.”  
“I am laying down. I’m in bed,” she said, suppressing her irritation. "You can _see_ that I’m laying down."  
“You should stand up when you sing,” he labored to scold her.  
“But I - I don’t even want to sing right now. I just want to talk to you…”  
“Sing for me, Christine. But sing properly. I don’t just want your voice. I want your soul.”  
A familiar frost descended upon her. Reluctantly, she stood up out of her bed. She propped the phone on her nightstand so that he could see her. And she reluctantly began the song again,

_Il était un roi de Thulé_   
_Qui, jusqu'à la tombe fidèle,_   
_Eut, en souvenir de sa belle,_   
_Une coupe en or ciselé!_

**E: I need my violin. You must bring it to the hospital. Today.**   
**C: And where would I find your violin?**   
**E: He will know where it is. Ask him.**

She met him in the parking lot. He carried Erik’s violin case not by the handle, but in his arms. Each time she saw him again he was more handsome than she had remembered, though she had never seen him without his mask. His jewel colored eyes flashed her an uneasy smile.   
“What’s going on?”  
“He’s going to be discharged to rehab tomorrow. He says he wants to play for the ICU staff. To thank them.”  
“To thank them?” he asked incredulously.   
“Yes, to thank them. For all they have done for him.”  
He shrugged.  
“Yeah. Sure. Can I come watch?”  
“We can watch from behind the observation window.”  
He followed her to the elevators, up to the fifth floor, still cradling the violin. Giry was waiting for them, giving them new masks and gloves. Christine had not seen him since that one precious night. His friend had not seen him at all since he entered the hospital.   
“He is so much stronger than he looks,” Giry whispered tenderly.  
He still looked like death, laying maskless in his bed. Tubes still connected him to various machines and drips, but he was alive. It was more than anyone on the floor had expected.   
Giry donned her face shield and carefully took charge of the violin. She entered room five and presented it to Erik as the others watched from the window. Nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists all crowded around the window to watch the strangest patient they had ever had to care for make his display of gratitude.   
Giry helped him sit up in his bed. Ignoring her warning to move slowly, he brought his feet down onto the floor and sat up straight. She removed the pulse monitor from his bony finger. The IV line tangled around the violin as he tuned it. He seemed to lose his breath and focus easily. Then he weakly pulled the instrument to his chin. He looked up and found Christine in the window. She felt compelled to raise both hands to the glass between them. She could only smile with her eyes.  
As Erik began to play, the music caused ripples through the staff. They were immediately impressed. They were touched that a patient wished to play for them, but they had not known what a gift it would be. They knew only that he was the mysterious patient in room five who had no nose, no name, no family. But his music gave them a new respect for him. He was clearly exhausting himself with effort, and yet his divine talent shined through each note. They were proud to have helped him live, that he might go on to pour music like this out into the world. The only sadness was the knowledge that when he was gone his bed would be immediately filled by someone else.   
The music drifted down the hallway and into the rooms of other patients. A reverent silence fell over the entire floor. Christine had to admit to herself that his demands for her to sing had deeply bothered her. They had left her with an icy disquiet in her chest, made all the worse because it all felt so familiar. But this hauntingly beautiful music was also familiar. Not only the melody, but the warmth it gave her. She was certain it was an echo of some kindness he had once done for her.  
“What is this piece?” his friend asked, his green eyes glassy. “He has never played this for me.”  
She brushed a tear from her cheek.  
“It’s the Resurrection of Lazarus.”   
“Ah. I suppose that is fitting.”  
“Giry told me that he really was very close to dying. They worked hard to save him. They work hard to save as many as they can.”  
They listened for a little while longer. The small group was hypnotized by the beauty of it. She suddenly wished to reach out and hold this new friend’s hand so that they might share the music together. Then he spoke again,  
“You know this is all for you?”  
“It’s not for me. He wanted to say thank you to the staff here.”  
“I haven’t seen him be grateful for anything in his whole life. This isn’t for them. It’s for you, and you alone.”  
She bristled silently, even if she knew that what he was saying was true. His resentment became more pronounced with each huffing breath.   
“He has never played like this for me. I don’t know that he has ever really played anything for me.”  
Christine grew very stiff. She didn’t know what he was trying to say. He turned to her and she saw enormous pain in his wet eyes.  
“You love him, don’t you?” she whispered.  
“He belongs to you now.”  
“Can’t he belong to both of us?”  
He shook his head.  
“He doesn’t want me. I need to let him go.” He took his phone from his pocket. “I’m texting you my address. You can come get his things.”  
“What?” she gasped. “Does he - does he live with you? I thought he had his own house?”  
He laughed dryly as he typed, no longer meeting her stare.  
“Oh yes, he has quite the empire down there.”  
“Down there?”  
“He lives in my basement. You can come get his things whenever is best for you.”  
“You’re kicking him out? While he’s in the hospital? I can’t believe you would do that,” she cried.  
“He will go to rehab for a few weeks, right? If you don’t want him at your place, maybe you could help him find his own apartment. He has an income. But I - I don’t really want anything more to do with him.” He began to step away.  
“All because he played the violin for me?”  
He paused and said with a brutal finality,  
“No. Because he has never looked at me the way he is looking at you right now.”  
He turned and walked away. Christine put her hand on the glass and again found Erik’s dark and burning eyes. They had never left her.

____________________________________

This violin scene was inspired by an actual ICU patient in Utah who played his violin for ICU staff. The article is really moving:

[ https://ksltv.com/449301/utah-man-plays-violin-for-icu-while-intubated-with-covid-19/ ](https://ksltv.com/449301/utah-man-plays-violin-for-icu-while-intubated-with-covid-19/)?


	5. Winter: Erik for the Long Haul

She followed him blindly into the basement. He was much kinder now than when she had last seen him at the hospital. He asked her to come inside and have some tea before they went downstairs to pack. For the first time he removed his mask in front of her. He was just as handsome as his eyes foretold.  
“Daaé. What kind of name is that?”  
“It’s Swedish. My father was born there. What about yours?”  
“Persian. I was born in Tehran, but my parents moved here when I was very young.”   
They made light conversation until their cups were emptied and an awkward silence settled over them. He jumped up suddenly, as if he could jolt them out of their discomfort.   
“I guess it’s time to show you where his things are.”  
The damp must hit her nostrils hard, even through her mask. The air had texture here; dust swirled in thin shafts of sunlight, mildew actively lurked in the corners.  
“How long has he lived down here?” she asked sadly. She pulled her coat tighter around herself. The room was very cold.  
“A few years now. He used to live upstairs. With me.”  
“But why? Why would he want to live down here?”  
It was not a finished basement. Exposed concrete blocks made four walls around a concrete slab of a floor. Very little light penetrated the space through the small windows near the ceiling. It was clean but messy; an unmade bed, sheets of music scattered across the floor, books stacked in front of the bookcase instead of inside it. Erik did not own much. More papers and books than clothes. She was surprised to find a laptop. An enormous grand piano took up more than half the room.   
“It was his choice,” he said, sitting himself near the head of the bed. “I certainly did not want him living down here.” The man sighed and passed his hand over his face. “He was not always like this.”  
“Like what?” she asked, sitting at the foot of the bed.  
“Such a reclusive…” He silently mouthed an frustrated expletive. As if he lost the heart to say it out loud. “We used to travel. He actually came to Iran with me to visit my grandmother before she died. He charmed my entire family. By the time we left he was speaking Farsi better than me. He was correcting my grammar, the prick! He’s a genius, you know? He learned a whole other language in less than a month…” He spoke wistfully. Of a past that had long ago slipped away. “He finally just caved into his demons. He got tired of all the stares, all the questions…” He pointed to his own face, to indicate he was speaking of Erik’s. “He’s had a rough life. It’s so hard for him to be happy. His parents were…” He shook his head. “He can tell you all about that. He will need to. You will need to know to understand him.”  
She nodded.  
“Christine, I know you think I am a horrible person. But he has eaten up half my life and he doesn’t even care. He can’t stand me. He thinks I am meddling when all the time I am only trying to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself - or anyone else. But I can’t be responsible for him anymore.”  
“Hurt anyone?” she asked with disbelief. But he ignored her question.  
“He wants to be with you. And, for reasons beyond me, you seem to want that too. He spoke of you all summer. Breaking that swab in his nose opened up this flood of emotion. He was a mess for weeks. He made me drive him by the stadium a few times looking for you. I thought they were going to call security on us. Eh, it wouldn’t have been the first time we got into trouble.”  
“I don’t think you’re a horrible person.”  
“Thank you. That means a lot. I still care what happens to him. I care what happens to both of you.”  
“Were you two…” she took a breath. “Were you lovers?”  
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand it; what we were. But whatever it was, it has been over for a long time and I need to let it go.”  
She reached out and took his hand and sat with him for a moment. No more awkward silences. Just a quiet moment between two friends before the mundane work of packing up.   
He called out to her as she stuffed the last box into her car.  
“Will you tell me if anything - if anything happens to him?”  
“He is going to get better. They’ve already said so.”  
“I know. But if anything happened, you would tell me?”  
“I would tell you,” she promised.  
She turned to go, but again he called out,  
“Christine? Will you tell me if you ever need anything?”  
She smiled and innocently asked,  
“Like what?”  
“Like, if you realize you’ve made a mistake.” 

Erik called her every day from rehab. As soon as he had come out of sedation he had signed all the paperwork to make her his contact. His person. His voice was growing stronger with various therapies, as were his body and mind. To her relief, he stopped demanding that she sing to him. Instead, they just talked until a therapist or nurse would come and tell him to rest.  
He would be released within a week. She spent her days off cleaning her apartment, stacking his boxes of papers and books into her closet, clearing out space in her dresser for his clothes. Everything carried with it that damp underground smell. She took all of his clothes to the laundromat and put them through two cycles of wash. Despite the smell, she handled his belongings with care. Because they were his. She pulled one of his black shirts from the drier and inhaled deeply. Soon he would be with her too.  
She found herself humming as she moved about in this domestic fury. And even though singing in front of him had made her deeply uncomfortable, she realized that music no longer brought a cloud of tragic nostalgia over her. She was beginning to enjoy the sound of her own voice again.  
She hung up a string of white Christmas lights over the window in her living room. The holiday was just a few days away. It was the most Christmas she could bear without her father. Midnight Mass was canceled anyway. She had the feeling Erik would not mind that she could not put up a tree.   
She realized there might be personal items that he would need; a new toothbrush, a comb, a set of pajamas. She fretted, not knowing what he would want or even if it were too intimate a gesture. But this was ridiculous, she told herself. There could be nothing too intimate between them. Except maybe, that. She squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t ready to think about that.

Preparing for Erik helped distract her mind from the madness of the hospital. The winter months had brought a surge in cases that rivaled the summer. Death was all around her. Patient after patient came into the ER unable to breath, swearing they did not have COVID, that COVID wasn’t real, that no she couldn’t stick that up their nose for a test. Giry lamented that for some, even their dying words were of disbelief, conspiracy, bitterness. She would hold a phone to their ear as their loved ones sobbed their goodbyes from a distance. And still, they could not believe it was happening.  
As Christine walked home from the hospital in the evenings, she observed them quietly, those maskless, dauntless people still crowding into bars, leaning in close to their friends as they laughed and flirted with fate. She watched them with a heavy heart, knowing that at least a few would soon make their way to the ER.   
She was afraid. She did not want this virus. It wasn’t clear why it devastated some and let others go. She couldn’t understand how someone as unhealthy as Erik had somehow escaped its clutches. She did not want to find out how tightly it might clutch at her. Instead of allowing her fears to consume her, she focused on this strange man who had crashed into her life with his talk of eternal love and his enchanted violin. The deathly aspect of Erik’s face was not lost on her. The dark of his eyes, the contours of his skull, the hollow of his nose - all placed death foremost in her mind. But instead of inspiring her with horror, his face was familiar to her. A comfort. Whether she had known this face long ago, or simply recognized it from countless works of art, it was a timeless face. The face of the one she loved. She let him devour her mind with his mystery.   
When it became certain that he would live, she fell into a blissful state, anxious for the day she could hold his hand again. But as that day drew nearer, she felt the first twinges of apprehension. She really did not know him. And now she would be sharing her one bedroom apartment with him for an indefinite period of time. What if friend had been right to suggest she might eventually realize this was all a mistake? Just an hour before she was to leave her apartment to bring Erik home, there was a knock at her door.   
“We’re here to deliver a piano,” a man said, his voice rising into a question, two other men peering over his shoulder.   
“The piano,” she said with a deflated sigh. He had sent Erik’s piano. He really was letting go.   
The men helped her push her small dining table against the opposite wall, just under her television. The piano blocked the path into both the kitchen and the hallway. She could see right away that this instrument, well-polished and well-loved, was an entity unto itself. It regarded her as its adversary. It would compete with her for its master.

Her chest tightened when they rolled him out in a wheelchair.   
“I can walk,” he insisted the moment he saw her. He was embarrassed. “I can walk - they just won’t let me.” The health tech pushing him rolled her eyes above her mask.   
“It’s alright, Erik. Let’s take it slow,” Christine said, reaching out to lightly touch his arm. “Let’s take everything slow.”  
As much as she wanted to, she did not embrace him. She remembered the effect touch had on him. A full embrace would be too much. It could overwhelm them both. She took his elbow and helped him into the passenger side of her car.  
“You can take your mask off now,” she said once inside. She slid hers down around her neck. “You aren’t contagious anymore.”  
“Not yet.”  
“Really, you can take them both off. It’s not good to cover your - your - you need to be able to breathe uninhibited.”  
“I’d rather not, Christine. At least not while we’re in traffic.”  
She nodded with understanding and started the engine. But it made her sad. They were both very quiet during the drive to her apartment. She desperately wanted to hold his hand. She had already held his hand once, and she even felt that he had held hers back. But now that he was both awake and in her presence, there was a crushing unease between them. 

She helped him out of her car with care. He was still so fragile. She had to use all her strength to pull his thin frame up the stairs. He was heavier than he looked. He held onto the railing with one arm, the other hung around her neck as she willed him upwards.   
“You can do this,” she whispered between gasps for breath. “It’s just one flight. You don’t have to go anywhere after this. We just have to get you inside.”  
The first thing he noticed, before he had even crossed the threshold into her home, was the piano.  
“What is that doing here?”   
“He sent it over right before I left to get you.”  
He only nodded and stepped through the doorway. He fell onto her couch exhausted. She gave him a glass of water, which he set aside without drinking. She tentatively sat at the other end of the couch as he rested and caught his breath.   
“I have a soup ready for dinner. Just rest and I’ll heat it up for us.”  
“Thank you, Christine. The truth is I am not very hungry. I am sure it is delicious, but I couldn’t even taste it.”  
“But Erik, you still have to eat, even if you can’t taste anything. Your body needs sustenance to recover.”  
“Do you have any wine?”  
She laughed. “It will be some time before you should drink alcohol again.”  
He frowned. Or at least, she thought he was frowning. She could not really tell behind the layers of black cloth covering his face. She found herself staring at the little white scorpion in the corner of his mouth.   
“Please, Erik. Won’t you take the masks off now? I’m concerned that you won’t get enough oxygen wearing both of them.”  
He slowly reached behind his ears and slipped off the COVID mask. The other remained in place, covering his forehead, providing the false arch of a nose.  
“I will keep this one on for now.”  
“But I’ve already seen you.”  
“Enough,” he said harshly. “I am more comfortable this way.”  
The ice in his voice crept down her throat. She suddenly wanted to crawl out of her own skin. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Even sitting on the other end of the couch felt too close. She reached beside her for the remote control and turned on the television.   
“I need to catch up on the news,” she said, as if needing to explain why she would break the heavy silence between them.  
They watched the local news for a while: reports of the rising COVID cases, holiday fundraising for charity, the weather. There was a breaking story that the mayor’s office had just sent out over three hundred invitations for a New Year’s Eve party at his private residence.   
“What the hell?” Christine half shouted.  
“Ah, more idiocy from Mayor de Chagny.”  
“This is above and beyond his typical nonsense,” she sighed. “No doubt we will see some of the city’s finest come into the ER approximately one week after.” She put her head into her hands. “The vaccine can’t come fast enough.”   
To her shock, she felt his fingers wrap around her wrist.  
“Will you be vaccinated soon, my love?”  
She turned to look at him with lips parted in disbelief. His black eyes burned through the flesh of her face.   
“I’m scheduled for next week…”  
His fingers tightened their grip on her. It seemed as though he was attempting to hold her hand, but did not know how. She peeled his fingers from her wrist bone and took them into her palms.   
“I am relieved,” he said softly. “I am worried for you. I don’t want you to be sick like I was.” She was touched. It had been a long time since anyone had told her they were worried for her. “I hope a chandelier drops on all their heads for the risk they are causing you.”  
Her smile fell.   
“That’s a very strange thing to say, Erik. And very, very specific.”  
“I would wish far worse on anyone who dared to hurt you.”  
“I would never wish harm on anyone. I just wish they wouldn’t be so reckless.”  
“Yes. Of course.”  
She affectionately squeezed his hand.  
“I’m sure that no one will be wearing masks. It will be an anti-masquerade, ha!” She gave a fake laugh.   
“Ah, but that family has always been this way. They never seem to learn that their money cannot protect them from their fate, especially when they court it so overtly.”   
Again, an icy chill ran down her neck.  
“How did you know they have a chandelier in their house?”  
“How do you know they don’t?”  
“They do have one. It’s beautiful. I’ve been there. I used to go to school with the Mayor’s younger brother. He was always very sweet. But Philippe has always been such a pretentious jerk. It doesn’t really surprise me that he would hold a fancy party during a pandemic. What can he even have to celebrate when so many people are dying?”  
“As you say, they have always been this way.”  
  
They watched television a little while longer, holding hands, but in silence. After a time, she felt his grip go slack and she saw that he had fallen asleep. She tucked a blanket around him where he had slumped over. She ate on her own, standing in her kitchen, watching him curiously. He did not stir. She cleaned up and decided that she should get ready for bed. She had to work in the morning. She would wake him after her shower and help him get ready for bed too. She would insist he take her bed.  
She brought her pajamas into the bathroom with her so that she wouldn’t have to go out into the hall wrapped in only a towel. Her fingers hovered over the lock on the door. It felt strange to lock the bathroom door in her own house. But there were many things that were strange about this evening. Her awareness of his presence pricked her skin. How could she have been so stupid as to invite a stranger to come live with her? She felt his eyes upon her as she pulled her shirt over her head. But that was impossible. He was asleep in the other room. How could he possibly see her? She stared at herself in the mirror at moment before deciding to lock the door after all.   
She let the sound of the shower drown out her thoughts. But when she shut the water off, her ears were filled with music. He was at the piano.   
She toweled off quickly. She put her bra back on, so that she wouldn’t feel indecent in his presence. Then she slipped on a pair of forest green leggins and a ruby-toned camisole. She covered herself with a white silk wrapper that had been gifted to her years ago. She wiped away the fog in the mirror with her hand. Her cheeks were rosy from the hot shower, but her eyes were tense with fear. She was afraid to open the door.  
He had his back to her so that she could stealthily observe the stretch of his arms and the dance of his fingers over the keys. She walked lightly down the short hallway, trying not to disturb him. She rounded the edge of the piano bench so that he could see her. He met her stare and with only his eyes directed her to sit next to him. She obeyed. She sat so close that his shoulder brushed back and forth against hers as he played. The piano that she had instantly recognized as her rival conspired with him to enchant her. All her fears flew away. He was the man she had always known him to be. His music mesmerized her, swept her into his world of darkness, crowned her as his eternal goth queen. She could rule by his side like this forever. He had said so. It had already been so for so long.   
She did not want this music to end. But he stopped and looked over to her and said,   
“Let us sing something from the Opera, Christine Daaé.”  
And the words fell upon her ears like the opening of a curse. Her hand lept from her lap and involuntarily crashed onto his, pressing down on the keys. To let him continue was to invite a catastrophe to fall upon them.  
“No, Erik.”  
He looked at her with hurt confusion. Grasping for a way to salvage the closeness of the moment she said,  
“I think you should rest. Let me help you get ready for bed.”

She showed him the bathroom. On the counter she had arranged a fresh towel, the black pajamas she had purchased for him, the new toothbrush. His gratitude bordered on embarrassment. She hovered outside the door as long as the water was running. He winded so easily and she knew that some long haul patients needed help even standing in the shower. She hoped desperately that he would not need this kind of assistance. He did not ask for it.  
She covered her couch in a sheet and blankets for herself. When he emerged from the bathroom, washed and dressed and remasked, she led him to her bedroom. She had even changed the linens for him that very morning. But he balked.  
“I cannot take your bed.”  
“Please, Erik. You’ve been sick. You need a proper bed.”  
“No. It wouldn’t be correct for me to take your bed. Let me sleep on the couch instead.”  
No matter what reason she gave, that he was still unwell, that he was her guest, he would not accept her bed. Finally, tired and uncomfortable with the disagreement, she agreed to sleep in her own bed while he slept on the couch. He was clearly exhausted and needed sleep, no matter where. He laid down and pulled the blankets over him. She wanted to tuck them around him as she had when he had first fallen asleep. But again, she found that she could not touch him in the ways she most wanted to. She turned out the light on the table by the couch leaving only the soft glow of the Christmas lights.   
“Do you want me to leave these lights on? It might be nice to have them if you wake up in the night. In case you don’t remember where you are.”  
“You can leave them on.”  
“Good night, Erik.”  
“Good night, Christine.”  
She saw herself lean over him and kiss his forehead. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It would be too much. It would mean too much. She retreated to her room. She knew she would never be able to sleep like this, with him just down the hall. It was going to be a miserable night of tossing and turning. And then she would have to wake up before dawn for a twelve hour shift at the hospital. This amount of gut-churning anxiety was not at all what she had expected when she had imagined him here in her home. But just what had she expected? She left her bedroom door open, in case he needed something in the night.  
A little past midnight, she heard a shuffling in the hall. She sat up. He could be looking for the bathroom, he could need a glass of water, but she waited for him to call out to her. Then suddenly, his outline appeared in her doorway. His eyes, which had always appeared black during the day, reflected some unseen light in the darkness. They flickered as if they were aflame.  
“Are you alright, Erik? Do you need something?”  
“I cannot sleep.”  
“I can’t either. Come here. You can come in.”  
He moved slowly. She saw that he carried with him a pillow and blanket.  
“I just want to be near you. I - I could sleep just here, at the foot of your bed -”  
“That’s crazy, Erik. I would never let you sleep on the floor.” She took a deep breath and pulled the blankets down. “Come. You can lay next to me.”  
He slowly lowered his frame on her bed, as far away from her as possible. She pulled the blankets up over him, trapping his chill inside. He was a door left open, letting all the cold into her bones. Still, she wished his body were closer. She sought his hand and laced her fingers in his.  
“Christine? Did you kiss my forehead?”  
“How could you possibly remember that?”  
“I remember everything. Even when I was under. But did I remember that correctly?”  
“Yes.”  
“Do you think that one day, you might do that again?”  
She huffed playfully. She leaned over him and held the side of his face in her hand. She pressed her lips to his forehead, near his hairline. But her mouth met mask.   
“Erik, why are you wearing this to bed? Please, let me take it off.”  
“I - I don’t want to frighten you.”  
“But I have already seen you. We have even talked about it. Please do not hide from me.”  
She slipped her fingers under the rough edges of the mask and pushed it over his head. Even in the darkness she could see the deeper darkness at the center of his face. But truly, it held no horror for her. She felt that she were gazing upon the visage of a very dear old friend. A friend who had been lost and was now found. A friend who was also meant to be her lover, but just not yet. Not yet.  
She kissed him again on his exposed skin. He hissed with pleasure. His hips rolled beneath the covers. It brought to mind the day she had given him the nasal swab. How could she extract so much pleasure from him with just a simple kiss? What would happen should she move her lips down, over his? A frisson of bliss, a snap of electricity.   
“Christine!” He reached his hand behind her head and pulled her into his lipless mouth. He was all teeth and tongue. And so terribly hungry. She broke the kiss and buried her head in his chest so that his heart pounded into her ear. She didn’t know if she should push against him or clutch him closer. There was no in between.  
“I love you, Erik,” she whispered breathlessly.  
“I love you, my angel, I have always loved you.”  
He wrapped his arms around her and pushed his face into her hair. She shivered.  
“How is it possible?” she asked. “How could I feel like this? How can I be so afraid when I also feel so at home. I know that this is not the first time you have held me like this. ”  
“Are you very afraid of me? You are trembling!”  
“Will you be hurt if I say yes?”  
“I do not want you to be afraid of me. I love you. I only want to make you happy.”  
“How do I explain it? It is a fear that thrills me. This love of ours feels bigger than the two of us. It is a love that is beyond understanding. If I am afraid, it is only the fear one feels when staring into an abyss with no end. It is a terror that exhilarates.”  
“I feel it too. I could lose myself entirely in you. You have been all my thoughts and desires since I first laid eyes on you. This terror of which you speak - I understand it.” His arms tightened around her. Without thinking, she slipped her leg over his, so that his knee filled the space between them.  
“Erik, could we - tonight, I mean - could we just sleep like this? Will you hold me just like this, until we wake up?”  
“Of course, my love. I don’t ever want to let go.”  
“Well, you’ll have to let go in the morning. I have to go to work,” she laughed.  
“And then, when you come home, we will start your lessons.”  
“What lessons?”  
Then that fear which had been hot with passion iced over again. And it was the cold hand of dread that held her by the throat.  
“Your singing lessons.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading and especially to those who have left feedback. While this story is mostly being driven by the actual COVID situation as it is unfolding, reader feedback can help me figure out where to take it next. As I've said before, this is the first fic I've started without having the ending already in mind. I don't know what the ending will be because we don't know yet what life will really be like when the pandemic is actually over. The next chapter will certainly be in the New Year, and I hope 2021 is better for everyone. Wear your masks and take care of each other!


	6. Meine Königin der Nacht

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year everyone! 
> 
> I've raised the rating of this story to T because this chapter is a little more intense with canon-typical Erik behavior. I don't think it will increase to M though - I want to keep the story at a certain tone. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

He filled her home with music. She hadn’t cared about music since her father died and now suddenly her life was filled with it again. Each evening, when she came home exhausted from the ER, he was at the piano, wedged between the kitchen and the hallway, spinning the most beautiful melodies into the air, warming her heart with every note. Except when he wasn’t.  
He was not fully well. Some nights she came home to find him asleep on the keys. Or to find that he had never even left the bed. He did not touch the food she left out for his lunch. She had to remind him, every night, that he should bathe.  
In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, he tried to steer her towards lessons, but did not have the energy to command her to sit still and listen to him teach her. She purposefully kept busy and away from the piano bench. She loved to hear him play; she did not want him to ruin it by instructing her.   
At night they laid down together and he would hold her in his arms and kiss her reverently, but he would never move his hands beyond the boundary of her shoulder blades. In the morning she would awake to find his desire pressed against her, but she would pretend to ignore it. She could not bring herself to wriggle against it.

On December 31st, she came home from the hospital to find a delivery at her door. The largest wicker basket she had ever seen, filled with two dozen red roses, an expensive bottle of champagne, a pack of sparklers.   
“Erik? Is this you?”  
“Of course, my love.”  
“They’re beautiful,” she said, making a display of inhaling the roses. She actually found it a little tacky; the size of the basket, the number of roses. She did not even like roses. But she was touched by the gesture. Because they had come from him, she would cherish them until each petal dropped from the stems.  
It was then that she noticed he was dressed in full evening wear. Despite that he was unmasked, she almost found him handsome.   
“Why are you dressed like that, Erik? We aren’t going anywhere.”  
“It is a special night.”  
She smiled. It was strange - to dress up just to stay at home. But it could be fun. When she came out of the shower she found that he had laid out a new dress on her bed. Long black silk with sparse silver threads that glinted like little stars. She slipped it on and emerged timidly from her room.  
“Let me see you,” he demanded.   
She held out her arms and spun around.   
“Lustrous,” he purred. “Shall I open the bottle?”   
“But how did you - ?”  
“I know how to use the internet, Christine.”  
“Right,” she laughed. “Of course. Erik, I don’t think we should - I don’t think you should drink. You’re still recovering.”  
“Nonsense,” he said, popping the cork. Although it was long before midnight, he poured them each a glass and guided her to the piano. “Come, Christine. I would like to make music with you tonight.”  
“Do you feel well enough?”  
“Please stop. I am fine. Sit here with me.”  
She could see the yearning in his eyes. And it was New Year’s Eve under quarantine - what else was there to do? They raised their glasses to each other and when they were emptied he made her stand and begin her scales. When he was satisfied with her warm up, he took out his sheet music and she sat down next to him to review it.  
“The Magic Flute? You want us to sing this together?”  
“I am not yet strong enough to sing again. I want to hear you sing it.”  
Christine flipped through the pages.  
“Which part?”  
“Is there any question?” he huffed. He reached out to touch her chin. “You shall be my Queen of the Night.”  
“Aren’t I really more of a Pamina?” she laughed.  
He grew very serious,  
“No. You are not.” He stroked her cheek. “You are the Queen. And I want to hear you sing her aria.”  
“What? Erik, I can’t sing that. That is way beyond my talents,” she snorted.  
“I disagree. I want to hear you sing it tonight. I will teach you how to reach out and take Mozart’s very hand in yours.”  
She bit her lip in thought. It was so enticing, what he offered her.   
“I am afraid you will be disappointed in me, if you hear me sing that piece. It is very difficult.”  
“I know it is difficult. And I know that you will do nothing but lift my spirit on that voice of yours. Please, Christine. Sing for me.”  
“Let me have another glass of champagne first. For my nerves,” she teased as she left the piano bench. She refilled their glasses in the kitchen and noticed a headband in the bouquet basket. A flimsy little crown of golden stars and silver letters that spelled out Happy New Year. She giggled as she placed it on her head and returned to his side. He smiled.   
“Will this do for my tiara?”  
“One day, I want to see you in a diadem of real diamonds, sparkling from the stage.”  
She laughed again.  
“I don’t think I’ll ever sing on a stage again. But I’m happy to sing with you here.” She pecked his cheek and quickly downed her second glass. She wiped her mouth and nodded to him to begin the accompaniment.   
The Night Queen’s tantrum had never sounded so effortlessly sweet,

_Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen, Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!_  
_The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart, Death and despair flame about me!_

Angry staccato sparks flew from her throat, crackling in the air; but her eyes were alight with joy. She was having fun puffing herself up with the Queen’s frantic threats and manic rage. She wagged her finger and held her fist up to the heavens. She watched Erik intensely as she sang. She had not disappointed him. She could see that with each curse she laid out, he fell only more deeply in love with her.   
It is true, her voice cracked a few times. She had not studied or practiced music in many years and her voice was no longer as vibrant and clear as it once was. This was the first time she had ever dared to sing Der Hölle Rache; she had never before possessed the confidence to even try. But it is also true that Erik felt the ghost of the composer descend from heaven to sit next to him, to join him in admiration of her radiance. She brought tears to their eyes. 

_Hört, Rachegötter, hört der Mutter Schwur!_  
_Hear, Gods of Revenge, hear a mother's oath!_

When she was finished, he slammed all his fingers down on the keys in a thrilling cacophony of triumph. He stood up and grabbed her face with both hands. He landed a passionate kiss upon her lips that almost knocked her off her feet. Instead, it was Erik who fell backwards onto the bench.   
“You stood up too quickly, my love. You must be careful!” she said, sitting next to him. He kissed her hand as he recovered his breath.   
“That was sublime, Christine. Oh you are an angel!”  
They were not going to make it to midnight. They put on their coats and went outside to light a round of sparklers. They made circles and star shapes with the sizzling lights, driving off the evil spirits of the most wretched Old Year. The acrid smoke cleansed the air, making space for the new. They were in bed by eleven.   
They slid under the covers and into each other’s arms so easily, as if it had always been this way. He lightly brushed his fingers across the band-aid on her bare shoulder.  
“Did it hurt?”  
“No, no more than a flu shot.”  
“Is your arm still tender?”  
“A little.”  
“I will be gentle,” he whispered, tracing a circle on her skin. “When is the next dose?”  
“In two weeks.”  
He kissed her forehead. Music and champagne swam in her head. He moved to kiss her cheek, her eyes, her nose. His clutch on her back grew more fervent.   
“Erik,” she whispered. “Erik, I’m not ready to - ”  
“Hush, Christine.”   
He found her hands and brought them to his face. He guided her to caress him exactly as he wished; along his cheekbones, under his jaw. He kissed each of her fingers, then slowly isolated two on each side and guided them up to the center of his visage. She pulled back slightly, fear bubbling in her throat, but she allowed him to pull her in, deep into the abyss.   
He hissed at her touch.   
“I never knew…” he whispered into the darkness. Softly he pulled her shivering fingers in and out of himself. Not too far. Just enough. “I never knew what it could be.”   
She was too afraid to speak. The moment was too repulsive, too intimate, too forbidden, too sacred to shatter it with question. 

No chandelier dropped on the Chagny soirée that evening. But a disaster befell the party all the same. While only half the invitees attended, those that did were undeterred by the crown-shaped contagion suspended in the air all around them. As if the virus were beyond their imagination. As Christine had predicted, it was an anti-masquerade. Not a mask in sight. Not even one with sequins. The resulting misfortune began to unfold around one week later.  
The Mayor’s wife was admitted to the ICU first. The very next day, ten more party-goers appeared in the ER. By January 6, the ICU was full as the greater post-holiday surge overwhelmed the city.   
Christine was very, very tired. For twelve hours at a time she worked to triage COVID patients. And when she returned home, she found Erik either compulsively playing the piano or still asleep. She had to remind herself that she had not known him pre-COVID. She did not know what his habits had been before he got sick. It was difficult to tell what was due to his recovery and what might be clinical depression. He refused to discuss it.  
She looked in the refrigerator. He had not eaten any of the food she had prepared for him.   
“But you must eat, Erik. Your body cannot heal if you don’t.”  
“It all tastes like ashes.”  
She knew he wasn’t meaning to insult her cooking. His senses of taste and smell had still not fully returned. But it still bothered her.  
“Surely you understand that if you do not eat - ”  
But he had turned away from her. He wasn’t listening. It was infuriating.   
Later in the evening, she made the grave error of making small talk,   
“Raoul de Chagny came into the ER today. Of course he’s positive too. He probably got it from his brother’s stupid party. Didn’t I say that was going to happen?”  
She saw Erik’s hands clench at the air. As if he were angry with her.  
“What did he want?” he asked.  
“What? I told you, he came into the ER. He has COVID, just like half the people that attended.”  
“I think we should have a lesson tonight,” he said abruptly.  
“No, Erik. I am so tired. I just want to have some dinner and go to bed early. I don’t have to work tomorrow. We can spend the whole day together. I’ll sing with you then.”  
“No.”   
He got up and went to the piano. He furiously searched through his sheet music for something specific. Then he called her to join him.  
“I don’t want to,” she said firmly. “I am tired.”  
His stare from across the room froze her heart. The crouch of his shoulders, the dark halo behind his head; she felt that she could not refuse. She slowly walked towards the piano to join him on the bench. She tried to laugh it off,  
“You should be a contact tracer,” she said. “You are very persuasive. You could get anyone to do anything for you. You could get them to tell you exactly where they have been, all the people they have exposed. You could get them to tell you all the things they don’t want to tell the Health Department...” She laughed again, but weakly. He did not seem to find it funny.  
She turned to look at the music he had selected. Verdi’s Otello.   
“Oh no, Erik. Not that.”  
“Why not?” he snapped.   
“I don’t like that story. Jealousy and paranoia and murder. I don’t want to sing about that.”  
“It’s a classic,” he insisted.  
“They are all classics! Pick something else,” she fought back.  
Instead, he began to play. When she stood up to leave, he reached out and grabbed her arm. It was a rough touch. So unlike any touch before. She looked down at his fingers where they wrapped around her wrist. It wasn’t the awkward hand holding that had been so endearing. He wasn’t trying to show her affection. He was trying to force her to sing. And she did not want to. Her stare moved up from his hand to his eyes. He let go, a shameful expression falling over his face.   
“I am sorry,” he said quickly. “I don’t know why I did that.”  
“Don’t touch me like that again.”  
“Of course not, Christine. I’m sorry.”  
“I’ve had a long day. I’m hungry. I’m going to heat up my dinner. Would you like to eat too?”  
“No.”   
“Fine,” she said, leaving his side. She couldn’t help but to bang a few pots around in the kitchen. She was seething. And she wanted him to know it.   
He was also angry. She could tell by the ugly music he was making now. Further and further it wound into her ears, gnawing at her nerves. Finally, she told him to stop.  
“You’re going to disturb my neighbors,” she scolded him. When he continued making his noise, she said, “I think you should eat dinner tonight. You’re going to get sick again if you don’t eat something.”   
Without stopping he said,   
“You aren’t my nurse.”  
“And you aren’t my teacher! You’re mad because I won’t do what you want. Well, I don’t want to be your student!”  
With that he stood up, holding his fingers out as if crushing something between them.   
“Don’t you understand what I could do for you? You could be a star! You would never have to work at the hospital again.”  
“But I like working at the hospital. I am a nurse - it’s what I studied, it’s what I dreamed of. I like taking care of people. I don’t want to sing professionally. I haven’t wanted that in a long time.”  
“But it’s what you were born to do! I feel it - don’t you feel it too?” He clutched at his chest. “When you sing I swear I can hear the angels speak to me, Christine!” he pleaded.  
She shook her head. It wasn’t what she wanted. Perhaps, somewhere in her heart she remembered what he was talking about. But no. Not in this timeline.   
“Erik, I think you need to calm down.” She moved closer to him, speaking more gently. “Please, Erik. Please eat with me.”  
“Stop telling me to eat!”  
She lost her patience.  
“How can I help you if you won’t even do the basics for yourself? I hate having to tell you to eat, to rest, to bathe even. It’s infantilizing. I’m not your mother!”  
“What did you say?”  
“I said ‘I am not your mother.’” Only when she had repeated herself did she realize her mistake.  
“What did he tell you about her?”  
“What? He didn’t tell me anything. I’m sorry Erik, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just an expression, I only meant that - ”  
“What did he tell you about me?”  
“Nothing! He never told me anything. Even when I asked!”  
The flame in his eyes threw sparks. A deep wail broke out from his chest. The sound was so loud she had to cover her ears. Curses began to thunder forth from his mouth. She watched in horror as he searched about the room for something to tear apart, The sheet music, his own hair. He scratched at himself with rage. With a shiver she realized he was doing this to keep his fingers away from her.  
And the storm was only just beginning. He furiously paced about the room and when he briefly entered the kitchen she grabbed her phone from the table and ran down the hall to the bathroom, tripping over the piano bench on her way. She did not think twice about locking the door now.   
She trembled against the wall, listening to him rage and break things and occasionally pound on the bathroom door. What had she done wrong? She replayed the entire evening in her mind. What if she had just done as he asked and sang the duet with him? That miserable music! She had always hated it. She would never be Desdemona. She pressed her palms to her eyes and told herself over and over that it wasn’t her fault.   
After a half hour of ranting, he returned to the piano and resumed his sorrowful music from before. She was trapped. She did not dare to open the door. _This is hell_ , she whispered to herself. _I am in hell_. That he terrified her in her own home enraged her. She wanted him gone. 

**C: I need help.**  
**: What’s wrong?**  
**C: Please come over. I don’t know what to do.**  
**: I’ll be right there. Where are you?**  
**C: In the bathroom.**  
**: Stay there.**

**: I am so sorry, Christine.**

The music stopped. She heard him slither down the hall to stand outside the bathroom door. She could hear his fingers scratching at the wood.  
“Christine! Forgive me,” he wheezed.   
She slid her back down the door to sit against it. She began to weep into her hands. He was so lost. She could feel his breath creep in through the space between the door and floor.   
“Let me in,” he implored her.   
She wanted to. She wanted to take him up in her arms and stroke his hair and make it all go away. But she couldn’t. No one had ever touched her like that. No other man had frightened her to the core like that. It didn’t matter if it was written in the stars that they should be together. Curse the stars then, if that is the fate they have written for her.   
There was a knock at her front door.  
“Who have you called, Christine?” he hissed.  
“I called your friend.”  
“For the last time, he isn’t my fucking friend!”  
“Let him in, Erik. Let him in and leave with him or I’ll call the police.”  
“Why would you do that?” he shrieked.  
“Because you’re scaring me.”  
“You said - you said you would never hurt me!”  
How could he possibly remember that? And if he did remember her making such a promise, it meant that he had chosen not to promise her the same.   
“Go open the door, Erik.”  
“Christine, I would never hurt you, you know that, you know - ”  
“I don’t know that.”  
“You know me!”  
“I know that you have always frightened me.”  
He began to sob.  
“You told me that it only mattered what happened in this timeline, Erik. You said that. And yet you couldn’t bring yourself to do better this time.”  
“I don’t know how! Tell me how,” he wept.   
“Go let him in.”  
She heard him stand up and walk down the hall. She heard their muffled voices, Erik’s rising anger, his friend’s calming tone. They walked to her room and seemed to be gathering a few things. And then she heard him say,  
“Erik, put on your mask.”  
“Fuck you!”  
“I meant your hygiene mask, man. Calm down. I’m not your enemy Erik. No matter what you think. Go on then, go outside. I just want to make sure she’s alright.”  
She heard the front door slam, and then a gentle voice called her name through the door.  
“Are you alright?”  
“I will be.”  
“I was worried something like this would happen.”  
“Tell him he can’t come back until he gets some help.”  
“Do you know how many times I tried to get him to go to therapy?”  
“Well try again! Maybe he’ll do it this time.”  
“Maybe he’ll do it for you. I am so sorry it had to end like this.”  
She looked up at herself in the mirror. She held her hands to her reddened face, puffy and swollen from crying. She took a deep breath and angrily opened the door.   
She told him,  
“This is not the end.”

_________________________________

For whatever reason, it was left out of the Teixeira de Mattos translation of Leroux's novel that Christine sings Der Hölle Rache at an event shortly after her gala performance. Which means that Erik taught her this aria during their secret lessons together when she still believed he was an angel. The scene can be found in Chapter VI: The Enchanted Violin of the original French and the newer English translations.

Diana Damrau performs Der Hölle Rache: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuBeBjqKSGQ>


	7. Winter: Christine Gets Her Second Dose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the support for this story. COVID isn't over yet but the end is in sight, so keep wearing your mask, get your vaccine when you can, and stay healthy. 
> 
> How is Erik going to get himself out of this hole he seems to dig for himself in every incarnation?

Petals dropped off the roses one by one. Their shriveled edges turned purple, then black. Christine kept them in a little bowl on the counter. She didn’t know why she couldn’t bear to throw them away; it wasn’t as if they were the only thing he left behind. The piano remained in the middle of her home, vibrating silently yet angrily at her. He had taken only a few clothes and his laptop. He had left behind an explosion of overturned chairs and shredded music. He had left her behind shivering and locked in her own bathroom. She clenched her fist. How dare he.  
She sat on her sofa wrapped in a blanket. It was one day after her second shot and she was suffering fatigue and soreness. She could barely lift her arm. No worse than a flu shot, made all the worse by her broken heart. The pain in her chest certainly had nothing to do with a vaccine. And there was no relief from it. No one could heal it. She brushed her finger across the band-aid on her shoulder, just as he had done two weeks before. She could pretend they were his fingers that touched her, but it wasn’t true. There was no one to care for her now. No one to worry for her. No one to share her bed. She was completely alone again. He was just one more person for her to grieve.   
She mindlessly scrolled through her phone. She had forgotten that she gave Raoul her number the day she saw him in the ER. A lot had happened since that day. He had insisted. He had leaned heavily into their old friendship to convince her. She felt relieved that she never told Erik this. And a little guilty too. She found several texts from her dear friend. Invitations out. He had recovered from COVID quickly and acted as if there were no pandemic at all. As if his own brother - the very mayor himself - weren’t at that very moment in the ICU. 

**R: Meeting friends around the corner, want to come?**   
**C: No thanks. I’m tired. Wear a mask**   
**R: Sure**

She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see anyone. She couldn’t watch her movies or operas. She couldn’t even listen to the radio. She understood now what Erik meant when he said food tasted like ash. Music, food, even the air in her lungs had turned to ash. 

Giry knocked on the door with an order of paneer tikka masala and mango lassi. She left the brown take-out bag at the doorstep and moved away the proper distance. Christine opened the door weakly.  
“My favorite,” she gasped. She took the bag into her arms and inhaled the warm spices of her favorite dish. “Thank you so much. I haven’t been able to cook for myself. That second dose has really knocked it out of me.”   
“Christine, you are very pale. Are you sure it isn’t more than the vaccine?”  
She shook her head. But she wasn’t fooling anyone.   
“Do you have a fever?”  
“A small one.”  
Giry hummed with concern.  
“What happened with your friend?”  
“Oh, I - I...” Christine stuttered. She had never told her friend that Erik had moved in. How could she tell her he had already moved out? She would think she was just a foolish girl. She could tell no one. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”  
“I hate that you’re here alone,” the woman said. “I wish I could give you a hug.”  
“I know. Me too.” Her eyes began to well up with tears. She bit her lip, giving herself some other pain to focus on.  
“It will be alright, Christine. Don’t cry. You’ll feel better tomorrow. It only affected me for a day. Get better soon. We need you. The holiday surge is in full swing. That stupid de Chagny party!”  
Giry blew her a kiss with her gloved hand and left. Christine looked down sadly at the food. There was no way she could eat any of it. 

Later in the night, she sat on the sofa again, staring out into space, grinding rose petals to dust with her fingertips. She heard a scratch of music; the sound of a tuning instrument. She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and tried to ignore it. But the violin soon needled its way in through the window, into her ear. He didn’t, she muttered. No, no, no. He wasn’t supposed to come back until…  
She caved into herself and opened the window. Of course he was there. Of course he stood in the shadow beneath her building, all in black, only his yellow eyes blinking up at her. She did not smile. But neither did she tell him to go away.  
He began to weave his music of the night, icy and alluring. She looked right and saw her neighbor had also opened her window. She looked up and saw that numerous other neighbors were leaning out of their apartments, spellbound by the haunting performance below. Just like at the hospital; how easy it was for him to bind people with his spells. It had been March since anyone had heard live music. She heard someone stifle a sob. It touched them all, but she knew he played only for her. His eyes never left her.   
She did not recognize the music. This was not ordinary music. It was raw and spoke directly to her heart. She had to accept that her life would never be ordinary as long as he was in it. And she was ready for that. She was ready for an extraordinary life next to him. She saw herself throw open her door and run down to him. Embrace his bones and never let go. But just as quickly as it had all begun, the spell was broken by the sound of tires screeching across the pavement across the street. A car door opened and slammed angrily.   
“Erik, what are you doing? She told you to stay away!”  
She cringed. That was not at all what she had said. She had given conditions for his return. Conditions she had wanted him to fulfil and then return to her.  
“Why are you always fucking following me?” Erik shrieked in return.   
The sounds of their argument and toxic friendship filled the night. A sound of scuffling, of skin on skin. Was it Erik throwing the punches? Where once the sound of his violin had filled her with desire, their shouting now filled her with the realization that he had done nothing she had asked of him in the week since he had left. He was as filled with rage as ever. He thought he could bewitch her into opening her door to him again. He thought that all he had to do was play music.   
“Christine!” he called out, his deep voice echoing off the face of the building. “Tell him you love me! Tell him I can stay!”  
A neighbor threatened to call the police. Christine closed the window against her disillusion. 

[phone rings]  
 **E: Why won’t you answer?**  
 **C: We can text**  
 **E: But I need to hear your voice!**  
 **C: I don’t want to hear yours.**  
 **E: Why?**  
 **C: It does things to me**  
 **E: Christine, please forgive me!**  
 **C: It’s not about forgiveness Erik. I forgive you. But I cannot give you the help you need. Have you called any of the numbers I’ve sent? All those names came highly recommended**  
[phone rings]  
 **E: Answer - please! Why can’t it be enough that I love you? Why can’t that conquer the rest? Why do I need to talk to anyone else?**  
 **C: Because this isn’t a fairy tale. I don’t just magically know how to handle your issues**  
 **E: You even said you like to take care of people. Take care of me!**  
 **C: I’m not a therapist. It’s beyond my skills.**

 **C: Deep down I wonder if I might not be one of your issues too**  
 **E: Impossible.**  
 **I cannot live without you**  
 **You are what keeps me breathing**  
 **C: That’s an issue Erik**  
[phone rings]

**C: Please just make an appointment. Please just show me you are trying**

**C: I love you**   
**E: I love you so much it is killing me**   
**I am dying**   
**I am dying of love for you**

She threw the phone away from herself. As if it burned her. The piano called to her. And why shouldn’t it? She wasn’t a composer like Erik, but she knew how to play. It didn’t come to her as naturally as song, but she was a musician too. She knew things. Why shouldn’t this massive invasive instrument serve her while Erik was away?   
She thought back to the repertoire she had built in school. A series of melodies floated up in her mind that gave a voice to the emotions that sat in her chest now: Satie’s Gnossiennes. She sat for hours, invention and the muscle memory of her fingers overriding any gaps in her mind. She pushed past the pain in her arm, past the pain in her chest. She had learned these pieces while her father was still alive, while she still had hope for him and dreams for herself. When she had no notion of what was to come later. Of death, and plague, and reincarnated soul mates. Of madness. And yet Satie had written all of that for her. Her professors had steered her away from such darkness. And here she had returned to it.   
When she had exhausted herself, she banged her elbows on the keys and held her head in her hands. Her fingers pushed against the roots of her hair. They could be his fingers, she thought. She wove them delicately through the loose strands until she made herself shiver. Her cheek slid down her arm and onto the white and the black. She had every intention of resting for only a moment and later stumbling down the hall to her empty bed, But she fell into a deep sleep right there, imagining that the fingers that had once danced across these keys now caressed her instead.   



	8. Asheh Reshteh

**C: I didn’t tell you to tell him to stay away.**   
**: ?**   
**C: I heard you yelling at him. You told him I said to stay away. That isn’t what I said.**   
**: You said he can’t come back.**   
**C: Until he gets help! Did you explain that? All I want is for him to come back to me!**   
**: Yeah, I told him you said he needed help.**   
**C: It doesn’t matter anyway. We’ve been in contact. I just wish you hadn’t said that to him. I wish you hadn’t yelled at him like that.**   
**: You said he couldn’t come back until he got help. He hasn’t gotten any help. I thought I was doing the right thing.**

**: Have you already forgotten that I had to come over and take him away because he was terrifying you?**   
**C: Of course not**   
**: How was I supposed to know you suddenly aren’t terrified of him any more?**   
**C: I’m sorry. You’re right.**

**C: I just want him to know I’m on his side.**

**C: Are you on his side?**

He didn’t knock. He never did. He elbowed his way through the door carrying a tray of steaming soup.   
“Go away,” Erik murmured from beneath several layers of covers. “I don’t want you here.”  
“You need to eat,” he said, setting the tray on a chair by the bed. He sat himself at the foot of the bed, away from Erik’s head. He sniffed loudly. “You need to bathe too.”  
His foot knocked an empty wine bottle into another empty wine bottle beneath the bed. He picked one up and read the label.  
“To-kaj-i,” he sighed. “Come on Erik, I know you haven’t been eating. How can you drink this trash on an empty stomach?”  
“It’s not trash. I’ll have you know it is quite expensive.”  
“Look, I brought you soup.”  
“I’m not hungry.”  
“Even for asheh reshteh? It’s my grandmother’s recipe. Just smell it - there’s fresh cilantro - ”  
He regretted saying it right away. He knew Erik still could not taste food. He could not smell the mint or turmeric or garlic. The noodles might feel like worms on his tongue for all he knew.  
“I’ll just leave it here. Please, try to eat something.”  
“What do you want?”  
“I - I haven’t seen you in a few days. I just wanted to check up on you. It’s not healthy to be alone all the time. I know the isolation is getting to me. It must get to you too.”  
“It’s not getting to me. It makes no difference.”  
“How? Not seeing anyone all day - it’s making me lose my grip on what is real. Seriously, it feels like the world outside is fake. Like it’s made of paper.”  
“The world has always felt like that for me.”  
A pale hand slipped out from the blankets and reached for the masks on the nightstand.  
“Oh, Erik,” he whispered. “You don’t have to - ”  
“I know better than that,” Erik snapped. He slid the black leather mask over his forehead, and, just to make a point, he pulled his COVID mask up over his mouth. He pushed the blankets away from his face so that they could look each other in the eyes.   
“It isn’t quarantine that makes me crazy,” Erik whispered. “It’s you. Always bothering me.”  
“Did you know the mayor died yesterday?”  
“Why would I care about the mayor?”  
He sighed.  
“It just made me think about...when you were in the hospital. How close you came to…”  
He twisted his hands. Erik sank down under the covers again.   
“I came to say I’m sorry. For the other night. I made it sound like she didn’t want you there. And that isn’t true.”  
“I know that.” Erik gave a muffled snort. “We still talk.”  
“I came to say I’m sorry, Erik. For everything.”  
“You know it’s all your fault,” Erik hissed, jabbing an icy foot into his hip.  
“Don’t - don’t put your feet on me. You know I don’t like that…”  
“You threw me out - you knew she would take me home. And you knew I would fuck it all up.”  
A warm hand encircled Erik’s bare ankle and pulled it into his lap.  
“You’re right,” he said slowly. “I did know it would happen. Just like that.” He beheld the foot cradled in his hands, the white flesh, the blue veins. A finger lightly traced the gnarled tip of the fibula up under the hem of pajama. Erik tried to jerk his foot away, but the hand only gripped it harder, caressed it more tenderly. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have cast you out.”  
Erik rolled beneath the blankets; a low, muffled growl rumbling forth through the sheets.   
“What have I done?” Erik threw back the covers again and clutched desperately at his chest. “I feel as though I am dying, it hurts so much! If only you knew what it felt like! If only you knew how beautiful she was when she kissed me. She wasn’t afraid of me. She loves me! She has always loved me!” He was sobbing now. A dark wet spot grew across his black COVID mask where snot collected. “I would crawl across continents just to be her dog, just to sleep at her feet, but she let me sleep in the bed next to her. She let me - let me hold her - and she wasn’t afraid. I would cross oceans of time just to drink her tears. I would wash my face in them. And now she won’t even listen to my voice. She doesn’t want my music. If only you understood the torment!”  
All the while, the hold on his foot grew stronger, warmer.  
“I understand it, Erik.”  
Erik looked up from his own misery and saw that his friend’s eyes had grown glassy and bright, the green more intense, as it did whenever the whites turned red. Whenever the man wept.   
Erik pulled his foot free.   
“You never looked at me the way she looks at me.”  
“And you never looked at me the way you look at _her_.”  
He stood up and paced the small room, running his hands through his hair. He was beginning to hate that space; the clutter, the grime, the smell. The empty corner where the piano had been. Finally he said,  
“I want to help you, Erik. I’ve gone ahead and made an appointment for you. Tomorrow. I just picked the first name on the list she sent. It’s through zoom so you don’t have to go anywhere. You don’t even have to get out of bed. I will even come down here and set it up for you. All you have to do is talk.”  
“I don’t want to talk to anyone!” Erik squawked in complaint. “I don’t even want to talk to you. The only voice I want to hear is Christine’s!”  
“Then do it for her. I mean, you should do it for your own good. But if you won’t, then do it for her. If you want her back, she has given you a path. Take it. I’ll even help you.”  
When Erik did not respond, he bent over to pick up the tray.   
“Leave it,” Erik said softly.   
“But it’s cold now.”  
“It doesn’t make a difference. Is it really your grandmother’s recipe?”  
“You haven’t forgotten then? That was a good time. My family adored you.”  
“I don’t believe that.”  
“They did. How you used to make my grandmother laugh.”  
“I used to make her laugh, didn’t I? That was a long time ago.”  
“A lifetime ago.” He nodded sadly.   
“Will you really come down here and set it up for me? I don’t think I can do it otherwise.”  
“I will.”   
“Why?” Erik asked coyly. “Why would you do that for me?”  
“You deserve to be happy, Erik,” he said sadly. “You deserve all the happiness the world has to offer.”  
He tentatively placed his hand on the outline of Erik’s arm protruding through the blanket. For a moment he was lost in the stare of Erik’s black eyes as they glinted in the fading rosy light of the late afternoon. In a rash movement, he slipped his hand under the blanket to lightly touch the skin.   
“Sometimes, I believe I envy Christine,” he whispered desperately.   
“Who could ever envy Christine?” Erik sighed. “Poor Christine, with her corpse of a lover. A corpse from head to foot.”  
Erik slid his foot out from under the blanket and splayed his horrible yellow toes. He whispered it again,  
“From head to foot.”  
He had to turn his head away from Erik and his awful display. He really was so ugly.


	9. Spring: Erik Goes to Therapy

**C: I’m so sorry Raoul**  
**R: It’s been hard**  
**C: He was always very kind to me**  
**R: He was more like a father than a brother to me**  
**C: Call me if you need anything. I was so sorry to hear it.**  
**Is Sorelli recovering?**  
**R: She is. They say she’ll pull through**  
**Thanks Christine. You’ve been a good friend**  
**Do you want to meet up this week?**  
**C: I’m scheduled to work overtime.**  
**There’s a major surge going on.**  
**Things are pretty bad.**  
**R: Ok. Maybe next week.**

“Erik. Erik, wake up.”   
He shook Erik’s shoulder roughly. Erik let out a smothered snort and a groan of annoyance from under the blankets.  
“It’s time. Look, I’ve set up your laptop already. Do I need to show you how to use Zoom?”  
Erik slipped on his mask before pulling the blankets back.  
“What are you talking about?”  
“Your first therapy session. It’s in ten minutes. All you have to do is click ‘Join the meeting.’”  
“What meeting?”  
Big sigh.  
“With the therapist. I chose the first name on the list Christine sent - Erik, we went through all of this yesterday. You agreed to this.”  
Erik sat up.   
“Christine recommended them?”  
“She did. Get dressed then. You want to look at least a little presentable.”  
“I don’t want to use video.”  
“Stay in bed then. But promise me you’ll go through with this. And then maybe after, you can finally take a bath.”  
“Get out.”  
“Of course. I’ll see you later.”  
“Don’t - ”  
He left before Erik could tell him not to come back. Erik wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep for years and not wake up. But the laptop was right there, already open and blinking. In just a few minutes, all he would have to do was talk to the person at the other end. And maybe that would be enough to get her back.   
He considered changing his clothes. But it didn’t really matter, did it? No one would see him. He sat the laptop on his thighs as he leaned back on his pillow. He could sit up. That was about all the effort he could make.  
“Hi, you must be Erik?” said a bright and lively voice. Suddenly, the therapist appeared - unsummoned - on the laptop screen. He sat at a clean desk with a pad of paper and pen laid out before him. To Erik’s confusion, he appeared to be sitting before a forest. The sun was shining brightly through the trees. But the trees were silent and unmoving. Erik could perceive it was not a real forest. Perhaps a reflection in a mirror. A reflection Erik felt himself pulled into against his will. “Do you want to use the video so I can see you too?”  
Erik gave a firm No.  
“Alright, that is certainly your choice.”  
“Where are you?” Erik demanded to know. “Why does it look as though you are sitting outside?”  
“Oh that? It’s just my digital background. Just to hide the mess in my home office. I’m sorry, do you find it unsettling? Are you new to Zoom?”  
Before Erik could answer, he heard a young child screaming,   
“Milk! Milk! I want milk! I want it now!”   
The therapist’s face dropped as though he had seen a ghost.   
“Excuse me for just one moment,” he said with a forced smile. To Erik’s horror, the man stood up, walked away from the desk, and disappeared into the forest. The illusion was terrifying.  
In panic, Erik searched for the red button and clicked it several times. **Leave meeting. Leave meeting. Leave meeting.** He covered his face with his hands and began to sob. 

_We’ll try again, Erik. Really, it’s alright. I’ll just contact the second name on the list. And this time I’ll explain no video at all. How about you just use your phone. Does that sound better? Just a voice. Please stop crying, Erik. No, no I won’t tell Christine. And she would understand anyway. It’s completely understandable. Zoom is weird. It’s unsettling. You aren’t the only one who feels this way. Please stop crying, Erik. Look, you really need a shower. I’m going to get the hot water going and I’m going to come back and help you out of these clothes. It’s been too long. It will make you feel better. God, you’re so thin. I’m so sorry I let this happen. Just let me help you. Please let me help you, Erik._  
  
The second therapist did not perform any better. After a few minutes of introductions, during which the woman became flustered that Erik wouldn’t provide a last name for the paperwork, she began at last with,  
“Tell me about your mother.”  
**End Call.**

The third therapist sounded younger than the other two. Young and female; she was only a voice. A disembodied voice. He could almost pretend she was whoever he wished her to be.   
She began very simply with,   
“What’s on your mind today, Erik?”  
This, Erik could answer. Because there was only ever one thing on his mind.   
“Christine.”  
“Tell me about Christine.”  
He couldn’t say why, but he trusted this voice. It was calm and soothing. She seemed to care. He surprised himself by telling her everything. He told her that he believed he had found his reincarnated lover at a COVID testing center in the summer and found her again at the ER in the autumn. That she loved him, she really loved him for himself, and that she too believed he was her reincarnated soul mate. And he didn’t care if this made him sound crazy -  
“You don’t sound crazy at all, Erik. You sound like a person in love.”  
“She has the most angelic voice of anyone on this earth and if she would just listen to me and let me teach her - the things I could do for her, there is nothing I would not do for her. Even this, this session, I am only here for her.”  
He slid down into the bed. He stared up at the water stained ceiling, tears slipping into his ears as he spoke.   
“Christine suggested you meet with me then…”  
“She demands it of me. It was after a certain night...she didn’t want to sing for me. And I - I treated her very harshly. And I am so sorry! I love her, I never meant to hurt her!” He burst into heaving sobs.   
“You treated her harshly…”  
“I - I wanted her to sing with me. And she refused. She didn’t want my music. I remember that she was - she was complaining to me, all the things she hated about me. She was pressuring me to eat. She complained about taking care of me, saying she wasn’t my mother...I don’t remember anything that happened after that.”  
“You don’t remember anything that happened after…”  
Guilt creeped over him like a viscous film. He could barely say it out loud,  
“She said I had to leave. She said that I _frightened_ her.”  
“Was this the first time you had frightened her, Erik?”  
“The first time in this lifetime.”  
“Did you frighten her in other...lifetimes?”  
After a whimper of shame he said,   
“I wanted to do better this time. I promise I did. I’m not really wicked!”  
His heaving sobs unraveled out of control and he began to wheeze.   
“Erik, Erik breathe with me. Breath in and hold it. And breathe out now. That’s very good. Let’s do that again…”  
Erik did as he was told. He felt his heart release and slow down.  
“You mentioned singing with Christine. You must know a lot about breathing if you teach voice. You have total control over your voice, I can tell by the way you speak. Even through tears, you have total control over the timbre of your voice.”  
“Yes,” he uttered. “It is the only thing I control.” The session was only halfway through and he was already exhausted. He passed his hand over his eyes, wiping away the hot tears.  
“Think of how you manage your breathing when you sing. I want you to use this technique in the same way when you feel overwhelmed. It can give you back control. Breath in and hold it, count to five, then release it. This is something we can practice together. Do you think that could be helpful?”  
“Yes,” he wheezed again. He allowed her to lead him through a few more deep breaths.   
“I’m not really wicked,” he insisted weakly.   
“I do not think you are wicked, Erik.”  
“But I think I _used_ to be wicked.”  
“You said earlier that you can do better this time. I believe that you can. You aren’t tied to any past self. You can choose what you do moving forward.”  
“I would do anything just to hear her voice again.”  
“Is attending this session something you would have chosen to do on your own?”  
“No.”  
“You wouldn’t have chosen this…”  
“I believed that she could be the one to save me.”  
“That’s a lot of responsibility to put on a single person, Erik. Listen, I am very glad that you decided to come to this session today. She may have encouraged you, but it was you that chose to actually take my call. And I am very proud of you.”  
“Proud of me?”

It would be a slow process, she explained. He would have to lift most of the weight himself. One hour chats on the phone could not save him any more than a hundred lifetimes of Christine. Only Erik could save Erik. She didn’t say those last words of course, but that is what he heard. For he measured everything against his love for Christine. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. Even if it forced him to finally look at himself in the mirror. Even if it wrenched the most dreaded memories from his heart and forced him to examine each one before carefully putting them aside. Only Erik could save Erik, but he was driven by his desire to possess her again, to lay in her arms again, to share with her an eternal love that would never fade away. He would not miss a single session. 

**E: I have done what you asked.**  
**I have appointments scheduled for the next three months.**  
**Please, please let me hear your voice again. I am dying.**

[phone rings]  
“I am here,” she said, her voice as soft as a spring breeze.   
But he couldn’t speak to her. He could only weep that he was sorry while she murmured soothing words in his ear.  
“Please let me see you, my angel,” he pleaded.  
“Not yet, my love. Not yet. But I am right here behind you. Trust me that I am here for you.”

More trays of soup, asheh reshteh, asheh kadoo, abgoosht, more intruding visits that gradually became the second most welcome hour of the day. Of course, his nightly calls with Christine were the true golden hour. But he began to appreciate his friend’s company in a way he hadn’t in a long time. He no longer needed help out of bed. He only had to be reminded to shower once or twice. Some evenings he would even agree to an evening walk together. The winter was near its end, the sun lingering over the city just a few minutes more each day.  
“Have you ever thought of getting a job, Erik?”  
“I have a job,” Erik said, driving his hands deep into his pockets.  
“I know, I know. You take commissions. And how did the last one go?”  
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbled, walking a little faster.   
“You lost it because you refused to take out reference notes to the Dies Irae? Isn’t that right?”  
“Please shut up.”  
“It was a radio advert for - what was it?” he chuckled, knowing the answer full well.   
“It was for some community event last summer,” Erik snapped, throwing his hands in the air. “It was probably going to be a big COVID disaster anyway. I’m glad they dropped my work from the project.”   
They walked in silence a few more paces. The fading sunlight cast long shadows down their street. They each opened up the collars of their coats a little as it was warmer than they had expected. The air was heavy with the scent of the coming springtime.   
“I meant, have you thought about a different kind of job?” he said more gently, not wishing to push too far. “The kind where you might have to interact with other people?”  
“I hate other people.”  
“I don’t think that’s really true, Erik,” he hummed. “You don’t hate Christine. And you seem to like your therapist alright. And I even think you may have stopped hating me?”  
Erik looked up and over to his friend. He paused before speaking, taking a deep breath and holding it in for a long time.  
“I...I never hated you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for following this story! After three chapters of being apart, I promise you an in-person Erik and Christine reunion in the next chapter. It's been too long and Erik is trying really hard. Many thanks to shinyfire for working on this chapter with me. 
> 
> Keep wearing your masks and stay safe!


End file.
